(no subject)

[which_chick]

I'm fairly particular about brownies, not that this should surprise anyone. Anyway, there's one brownie recipe that I like, a good balance between fudge and cake. It's quite nice. These proper brownies are, at the risk of sounding entirely too heartwarming, the brownies that my mother used to make. From scratch, obviously. Mom has the same homemade food is more virtuous view that I have. (Where did you think I got it?) The sort of brownie I like is probably a chicken or egg thing -- I'm not sure that I would adore the brownies if I hadn't imprinted on them from an early age, but as it stands now, they are the proper sort of brownies. However, I don't have the recipe and I don't know where it came from and there isn't a recipe for brownies on the back of the cocoa box. I could call my mother and ask her, but that would, of necessity, disclose several things to my mother that I do not wish to disclose to my mother...

1. I want to make brownies. For myself. So that I can sit in my house and eat them while reading pirate smut. (I don't have to tell her about the pirate smut. She knows. Mothers always know.) When she was my age, she was making brownies for her children. (She doesn't have to say this part. I know she's thinking it.)

2. I do not have a good recipe for brownies yet. I think the amount of inadequacy in this statement speaks for itself.

3. I failed to pay attention about brownie recipes when she went over this cooking shit during my youth. (I was like ten. It's asking a lot for a ten year old to picture the day when there will be no mom-produced brownies, particularly when your mother has spent all ten years of your life to date hanging out on the crucifix of family duty and huswifely occupations like making brownies.)

Rather than disclose all of these glaring character flaws to the woman who cleaned up my barf and wiped my ass, I'm experimenting with a brownie recipe from the internet, a sprawling surrogate parent who lets me drink KoolAid and stay up late to watch Falcon Crest without ever asking me to do my spelling words or clean my room. Should that fail to pan out, I will call my mother and ask her for the damn brownie recipe even though this will involve a certain amount of groveling. *sigh*

The brownie recipe I'm test-driving tonight is the following:

2 sticks butter
2 c. sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 c. plain flour
6 tbsp. cocoa (heaping tbsp. make richer brownies)
2 tsp. vanilla
2 c. chopped nuts, optional

(Two things you should notice right away... first, it's got sensible ingredients I might actually have on hand. Second, it's easy to halve this recipe, an important consideration for a household of one. These were big selling points for the recipe, though I made the full version this evening.)

Cream butter and sugar.
Add eggs, then remaining ingredients.
Bake in a 9 x 13 inch greased pan for about 25 minutes at 350 degrees.
Makes 20 brownies

The batter worked up nicely, though thicker than I expected. I used pecans for the nuts because I didn't have walnuts and brownies-without-nuts is just wrong. It didn't spread well for me into the pan, so I didn't get it all the way to the edges. My bad. It didn't flow much while baking, either. I can try harder next time.

First tasting: The brownies are quite hot and not particularly easy to consume. Initial results, however, are pretty encouraging. They're good. I'm going to need to try them at room temperature too -- many brownies are good when they're hot and less good when they're cold.

I want more.

Second tasting: They're not cold yet but I've now eaten a total of six and I'm stopping for the night. They are quite good.

They are properly straddling the line between 'fudge' and 'cake' which is a major bonus. They are also appropriately rich and chocolatey. Probably that's the two sticks of butter and four eggs, there.

Some precedural notes:

They are not-quite-done... this was because the edges were burning and I could smell them burning so I pulled the pan from the oven. Unfortunately, because I didn't do a good job of spreading out the batter, the brownies overall were too thick and didn't get quite done in the centers. They're entirely edible, but not uniformly done. I don't think this is an insurmountable problem. Probably with better technique, I can overcome this problem. My oven might also run a little hot -- I think I'll try these next time at 325.

They have a hard crust on the outside, where they were touching the pan. I don't like the hard crust thing. The recipe said to cook them in a greased pan. I greased with crisco but did not flour. Anybody know anything about how to fix0r this?

Comments

[gwangi.livejournal.com]

Something tells me you might want to invest in one of these (http://www.samsclub.com/eclub/main_shopping.jsp?mt=a&n=0&coe=0&oidPath=0%3A-23542%3A-44085%3A-44088%3A-44103%3A920435).

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

Home defibrillators? Really, now. I don't eat very much meat these days. I get regular exercise. My doctor person said nice things about my blood pressure and cholesterol when I had 'em checked November last. I've also quit doing almost all the bad-for-me things that characterized my younger days. At this point, the only horrible things I still do on a regular (more than once a month) basis are dairy products and eggs.

I'm also within the "normal" range for my height-weight on BMI charts, can lift a hundred pounds, and can walk four miles in an hour. I'm not super-fit, but I'm fitter than many people I know.

I don't think the occasional batch of brownies is going to kill me and if they are, it's a risk I'm willing to take. I also eat the odd bite here or there of raw cookie dough despite the risk of salmonella.

[drabheathen.livejournal.com]

Did you cook it in a glass pan? If not, and you cooked it in a metal pan, did it conduct the heat well? If the pan is cheap, it seemingly takes longer to cook (because the middle is squishy) but since the pan heats up, the outside burns.

[drabheathen.livejournal.com]

Note: I asked about the glass pan because those burn easily, also.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I cooked 'em in an enamel-coated metal pan of dubious lineage. It isn't name-brand and I think it came from a yard sale somewhere. Think trailer trash cookware, here. (I have some very nice things for cooking... but a good 9x13 pan is not one of them.)

I think better spreading would definitely help matters. Also, the crunch thing went away after they sat on the stove overnight. They're lovely now. Lovely. Still a little gummy in the middle, but otherwise entirely lovely. I took some to work today and the folks there thought they were quite nice.

[not-your-real.livejournal.com]

...is there really no salt in this recipe?

About to try it.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

There is really no salt. Lining the pan with wax paper makes for 100% easier removal of finished product.

[not-your-real.livejournal.com]

I did try it with 1/8 t of salt, since I was using unsalted butter. Can't taste the salt, so it must have been the right amount.

I also followed your instructions (oh guru) on the heaping tablespoonsful of cocoa. I never know what "heaping" means, but for this occasion I used "as much as it will hold without hitting the landslide angle" as my measure. That is to say, roughly 2 tablespoons per tablespoon.

It came out very cakey indeed, and not much fudgy, though its fudgy heritage was detectable in the give of the brownie when bitten. It was good and interesting, but maybe I should have held back on the cocoa (it was not too cocoa-y - on the contrary, using only cocoa and not also melted chocolate gave it what Eric called a "delicate" taste - but certain parties at the party said that the amount of cocoa may have caused the lack of fudginess).