Saturday Sweets

This week I made Double Chocolate Walnut Brownies from scratch. NO MIX! I am sorta proud of myself. This is the first time as an adult I made brownies all by myself without a mix. Mom said we used to make them this way all the time when I was a kid. But yeah. I don't remember that.

I've been craving brownies for about a week. Jenn's sister Donna made them this past week and posted about her on her facebook. So yeah. I was so into the whole brownie thing this week. I decided that we had that cocoa powder that I had purchased for the Chocolate Peanut-Butter No Bake Cookies, and thought that it couldn't be that hard... Right...

EASY BROWNIES

Ingredients
3/4 cup butter (170 g)
1 1/2 cup sugar (330 g)
2 teaspoon vanilla
3 eggs
3/4 cup all-purpose flour (85 g)
1/2 cup cocoa powder (50 g)
1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt (optional)
3 oz (100 g) chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)

Method
Preheat oven to 350 deg F (Gas mark 4 or 180 deg C)

Line a 13 x 9 in (33 x 23 cm) cake tin with grease proof or other non-stick paper and grease the tin. (So yeah. I used parchment paper and sprayed it with nonstick spray.)

Melt the butter. (and this is where I start going wrong... I mean... how hard is it to melt 3/4 cup butter?)

Beat eggs with sugar

Add vanilla, flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt - mix (not so hard. Just add slowly. cocoa powder can be a little difficult. tends to not like to mix. Just take it slow and easy.)

Add melted butter (and now this is where I went wrong. You see, my brain was thinking that each stick of butter was 1/4 cup. And... I needed 3/4 cup. So. That's 3 sticks right? OMG! I've been baking for YEARS! I mean, I'm 32 years old and I started baking with my mother when I was just small. So I should know that 1 stick of butter is 1/2 cup right. Why I thought different I don't know. So yeah...

What I ended up doing after crying to mom cause I ruined the whole batter, and my brain wasn't thinking right was double the batch. So we ended up with one huge pan of brownies! YUM!)

Add chopped nuts (I put in a whole 6 oz bag since I was doubling the batch. After I got the walnuts mixed in I added a 11 oz bag of Nestle Chocolate Chunks.

Since I had to scrap out the 13 x 9 pan I ended up using a 14.5 x 12.5 pan. I didn't use any parchment, cause yeah. I was already flustered. So I just sprayed it with non stick spray and it seemed to work out just fine. Comes out of the pan just fine. - This is mom's finger in the picture by the way. She was poking the batter to make sure it "felt" right and tasted good. *shakes head*)

Bake at 350 degrees until a wodden pick inserted in center comes out clean. approximately 20-30 min. (because I used the larger pan I ended up cooking them for 50 min)

Variations
A. Instead of all-purpose flour + baking powder you may use self-rising flour

B. Instead of eggs you may use 3/4 cup med firm drained tofu

C. Instead of using nuts use a mars bar. Freeze the bar, smash it and then sprinkle on top before baking

D. To make a more cake-like brownie, bake in a square 9 x 9 metal pan. Cooks about 5 to 10 minutes longer, but turns out more fluffy, soft, and cake like

E. Add in chocolate chips for double the chocolate. (This is what I did. Yeah. Turned out the best ever!!!)

Even tho I totally messed up and such they still turned out great. They taste so great and we have a HUGE pan of them. This was a learning experience for me, and thankfully mom was around when my brain went dead or I would have wasted all that batter and started over again just cause i doubled the butter.

So yeah... YUMMY!