I made Ina Garten's famous brownie pudding. The decadent dessert is perfect for the holidays.

Garten's brownie pudding first appeared in her 2008 cookbook "Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics." It has found newfound popularity after the Food Network posted an old clip of Garten making the recipe on her "Barefoot Contessa" cooking show to its official TikTok page on November 7.

During the episode, Garten revealed she was making the brownie pudding to celebrate her and Jeffrey's 40th wedding anniversary because she used to send him boxes of brownies after they first met as teenagers.

"I think he was the most popular guy in the dorm when they arrived," she said. "So, I think brownie pudding is very romantic for our anniversary."

Garten learned the brownie pudding recipe from the late chef Anna Pump, whom she met while running her Barefoot Contessa store in 1978.

"Mom was hired to cook, but the beginning of a beautiful friendship began," Sybille van Kempen, Pump's daughter, previously told Business Insider. "Mom and Ina motivated each other. They shared ideas and supported each other's growth."

To make Garten's brownie pudding at home, you'll need:

• 4 eggs, at room temperature
• 2 cups of sugar
• ¾ cup of good cocoa powder
• ½ pound of unsalted butter, plus extra for buttering the baking dish
• ½ cup of all-purpose flour
• Seeds scraped from 1 vanilla bean
• Vanilla ice cream, for serving
• 1 tablespoon of framboise liqueur, optional

Framboise, by the way, is a raspberry liqueur. According to Garten, it's an ingredient that you "really can't quite taste, but it makes everything else taste better."

I forgot to take my eggs out of the fridge before I started this dish, so I let them soak in a bowl of warm water while I prepared the rest of my ingredients.

If you try this trick at home, just make sure the water isn't too hot — you don't want the eggs to start cooking!

Garten takes butter seriously, especially when it comes to this dish. The ingredient is essential for making the brownie pudding "very wet and delicious."

"You can't make brownies without butter," Garten says while demonstrating this dish on a "Barefoot Contessa" episode. "Anyone who tries to make brownies without butter should be arrested!"

A quick tip: cut each stick of butter into knobs if you want them to melt quickly.

Garten recommends using an oval baking dish that measures 9 inches by 12 inches, but she said "any similar size will work with this." The closest dish I could find was 8 inches by 11.5 inches, and it worked great for this recipe!

While two sticks of butter were melting on the stove, I used another knob to lightly butter my dish. I recommend using cold butter, which will glide over your dish with ease and speed.

Before I began making the batter, I sifted my cocoa powder and flour together and set my bowl aside.

If you have a stand mixer at home, you can do a lot of this prep while your mixer is beating the eggs and sugar. Since I only have a handheld mixer, I wanted to get everything done beforehand.

This task is obviously much easier with a stand mixer, but it wasn't too tough with a handheld one. Plus, I'll take any extra exercise I can get during the holiday season.

Garten says you'll know when the egg-and-sugar mixture is ready once it turns "very thick and light yellow."

As with the previous step, I made sure to mix the ingredients until just combined.

And just like that, my batter was ready!

Per Garten's instructions, I added the "hottest tap water" to the pan until it came halfway up the side of the smaller baking dish.

Cooking the brownie pudding in a water bath ensures that "it bakes really evenly," Garten explained during the "Barefoot Contessa" episode.

Garten says you can check if your pudding is ready by inserting a cake tester 2 inches from the side, which should come out "¾ clean." She also warned that the center of the dish could "appear very under-baked."

My brownie pudding didn't look under-baked at all. I was actually worried I had overbaked it. So I just took it straight out of the oven.

As I cracked through that satisfying brownie crust, I breathed a sigh of relief. My fears that the dish had been overbaked were unfounded as my spoon revealed the gooey middle. I immediately took a bite and let the dessert wrap me up in its rich decadence.

Garten's brownie pudding is definitely sweet, but I didn't find it overwhelming. While the framboise was optional, I think it helped balance the flavors. My editor — who has also made this dish — recommended sprinkling some sea salt on top, which was fantastic advice. It added even more depth and interest to each bite, especially with a little vanilla ice cream on the side.

It's obvious why Garten likes to whip this up for her and Jeffrey's wedding anniversary in the winter. The brownie pudding is so warm and comforting — the kind of dessert you tuck into on the couch while watching a holiday movie you've seen a million times before.

With so little prep, it's also a great recipe to make ahead and enjoy during this week of festivities. If your family finishes it too fast — a likely story — well, you can just make it again.

After all, what else are you going to do with that bottle of framboise?