Here’s another dessert for you. Book 3, Group 3 (Desserts), Subgroup 17 (Baked Goods) gives us card #9: Brownies. I’ve made these a bazillion times, and they are a GREAT base for adding your own ingredients.
These are good, easy, and fast–the trifecta you’re never supposed to be able to achieve. I highly recommend them, and I keep this recipe on hand for whenever I want to make brownies. One big difference: these use actual chocolate, not cocoa powder. ?
Like I said, I make these a LOT. They use chocolate instead of cocoa powder, and butter instead of oil. If you are looking for a recipe where you can use special/unique chocolate or butter (which is not the case with most brownie recipes and especially boxed mixes), this is a great recipe for those.
Ingredients. I chose to use dark chocolate as my chocolate this time. I wouldn’t suggest using milk chocolate (way too sweet), but you can get away with dark. You can use chips, bars, baking chocolate, however you want to do it. If all you have is cocoa powder, you can still use it: here’s a guide on how to make it work.
I added in dried cherries, cranberries, and some pepitas to my brownies this time–you add in whatever you want.
If you don’t have a double boiler, you can MacGyver one out of two saucepans. Put a few inches of water in the bigger one, get it boiling, and then put the smaller one in on top so that the water is just touching the bottom.
Keep an eye on it–the point of the double boiler is to keep the chocolate off of direct heat so that it doesn’t burn.
When I use bars it’s easy–half a bar is usually 4 oz. When I use chips I like to measure it out on the scale, but you can just use measuring cups too–it’s ½ cup.
This is totally easy enough to mix by hand (and I do often), but I decided to be fancy/lazy and use my stand mixer.
Chocolate and butter melted together. Again, if you have special chocolate or butter, this is a way to use it that most other brownie recipes (that I’ve seen) don’t make as easy to do as this one.
All mixed together. Easy to do by hand, even easier by mixer.
8×8″ pan that has seen many brownies in its day.
The final product. Tell me you don’t want to reach through your screen and eat that. Go make some brownies–they’re delicious.
Grade: A+
