Back to Basics

Today, I wanted to make something easy. Not every baking adventure has to be like making pie crust right? Right! So, I went with.....drum roll please...brownies!

I love, love, love brownies! But I love, love, love chocolate so it makes sense. However, brownies are on my long list of things I've never made from scratch.

I like a fudgy brownie. A chewy brownie. If I wanted cake, I'd eat cake. I was on the quest to find a good brownie recipe.

When looking for recipes online, it can be overwhelming. So MANY recipes! How do you find the good ones? I don't know. If someone does know, could they clue me in? LOL! I look at reviews and ingredients and try to pick the best one. If it requires 50 ingredients that I don't have, skip! On to the next. There is nothing worse than spending $100 on ingredients for a recipe that you'll never use again, and then have that recipe suck. Yeah. Been there, done that.

Here is the recipe I went with

Ingredients:

1 and 1/3 cups of butter, softened
2 and 2/3 cups of sugar
4 eggs
3 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups of all purpose flour
1 cup baking cocoa
1/2 tsp salt
Confectioners sugar, optional ( but really, is it optional? I think not)

Turns out brownies are just sweetened chocolate butter! Who knew? No wonder why I like them so much.

Method:

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Combine the flour, cocoa and salt. Gradually add to the creamed mixture

2. The recipe calls for you to spread into a greased 13 by 9 pan. But I opted for parchment paper. I LOVE parchment paper. It's easy. It's non stick. And there is NO mess to clean out of a pan when you use it. I cut a piece of parchment paper to fit my pan and did that instead. Spreading it was a little tricky at first. It's much thicker than store bought brownie mix. It was like the consistency of a thick frosting. But after some elbow grease I got it spread fairly evenly in the pan.

3.Bake at 350 degrees for anywhere from 25-40 min! The recipe said 25-30, but it took mine 35-40 to be done. The top should look dry, and a toothpick inserted into the center should come out clean. Then, walk away. Yes it looks good. Yes you want to try it RIGHT now. But walk away. Brownies are like cookies- they need to set up a bit otherwise they are just mush. They are much better after they've cooled down.

I harnessed my patience and waited. Dusted on the  "optional" powdered sugar and dug in. It was definitely worth the weight ( pun intended).

They are delicious! Thick, but not too thick. Chewy, fudgy and oh so chocolatey. Yum!

I'll make this recipe again, but probably not TOO often. Butter is too expensive, I'm tempted to eat the whole pan- that's not good, and I'm lazy. I like my brownies from a box. But once in a while a homemade treat like this just hits the spot.

Recipe courtesy of Taste of Home