Birthday brownies

I used to have a reputation for my "from scratch" brownies. It has been four years since I made brownies so my daughter has no recollection of my awesomeness.

For her birthday today, we made brownies.

We started with a trip to Target to get the necessary supplies: applesauce, butter, chocolate, heavy whipping cream.

Because I'm planning on making homemade whipped cream.

Imagine my delight when I found the following on clearance: Ghiradelli 60% cocoa baking chocolate ($1.60 for four ounces); Toll House stuffed morsels ($2.30 for the following stuffed chocolate chips: caramel, cherry or mint).

We preheated the oven to 350 degrees.

In a saucepan we melted:

1.5 sticks unsalted butter

6 ounces of the Ghiradelli chocolate

In a separate bowl we mixed:

1.75 cups sugar

3 individual serving cups no sugar added applesauce (replaces the egg, they didn't have a full sized bottle)

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract.

We added the fudgy mix and then a heaping cup of organic white flour.

Then we stirred in about half a bag if the caramel morsels.

We poured into into a greased jelly roll pan. It's a travesty I don't own a brownie pan these days.

I wove a thread of Justin's maple almond butter, another of Justin's vanilla almond butter and a third of Nutella across the top.

Bake for 40 minutes.

Hurricane Feast

The menu: steak with brandy cream sauce, salad with dried peas, sweet potato fries and iced coffee with almond milk, and for dessert Ghirardelli brownies (one box turtle and one box ultimate fudge). I mixed them together and used a cake pan, and I am pretty sure I used too much water, so they might be more like cake than brownies.

Nope, very rich and very much brownies.

The steak was selected to use it before Irene gets here, if I lose power due to the hurricane I don't want to lose my steak too. The salad was leftover from lunch the day before yesterday. The brandy sauce was in the freezer from the last time I made this dish (July 17) and it reheated just fine.

Vegan Brownies

I used to make killer vegan brownies all the time, but I haven't made them in years. My daughter needs to contribute to her Daisy crossover today, so I volunteered to make brownies to protect her dairy-free status.

The original Betty Crocker recipe:
Melt
2/3 cup butter
5 ounces unsweetened chocolate

Mix separately
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 eggs

Add chocolate
One cup flour

Mix and bake in greased pan for 40-45 minutes at 350 until brownies pull from side of pan
My version

2/3 cup margarine
3 ounces semisweet chocolate
1 ounce dark chocolate (in candy bar form because I ran out of the other)
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 tablespoon canola oil

For pre-batter:
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup applesauce
2 teaspoons vanilla

And the flour as directed

Doctored Brownies

So, I had hoped to watch the World Cup (France vs. Mexico) at the local mexican restaurant and introduce my daughter to world soccer, but the restaurant did not have enough interest and canceled the showing.

We used the laptop to stream the game live from ESPN to our television and thus began our new obsession. And after Mexico trounced France, we had dinner at the Mexican restaurant.

The American game today was full of drama and emotion. It ended a few minutes before lunch so I fried up some of those Wegmans spinach feta peorogies.

While I did that, I had my daughter whip up some Duncan Hines brownies. In the house for those emergency chocolate attacks.

The fun with boxed brownies is all about the substitutions.

Instead of two eggs, you could use applesauce. (4 TBS for each egg)
Instead of water, you could use coffee.
Instead of pure vegetable or canola oil, I was wondering what would happen if I included some walnut oil.

Now, in this batch, I stuck to the directions but added lots of chocolate chips and some caramel candies. Then I scooped them into muffin tins since I don't own a brownie pan.

We baked at 325 for 30 minutes.

When they cool, I'm having one with a BIG glass of almond milk.

Brownies.... for dinner

Our entire family had a bad day yesterday, even down to the five-year-old who got yelled at by a substitute in her kindergarten class. So I warmed up some Duncan Hines brownies I had made for a last minute event wednesday night, topped with vanilla ice cream and dark-chocolate dusted almonds... and served for dinner.

Brownie Sundaes

Warning: The following blog entry contains items that are not good for you, are not homemade, and are not necessary. But they may have saved my marriage.

I wanted brownies. Then my daughter and my husband started screaming at each other. Okay, he was screaming and she was crying. She was trying to play in the drain with the chemical drain cleaner. So the yelling was warranted. The commotion, and a very long day, screamed "warm brownie sundae."

My husband volunteered to go out for the goods.

"Vanilla?" he asked.

"Vanilla bean," I specified.

Then he called me an ice cream snob and reminded me that he remembered my ice cream idiosyncracies.

"What's my budget?" he asked.

"Thirty bucks if you're using the MAC card."

Out the door he went. My cell phone rang ten minutes later.

"They don't have anything remotely brownie like," he said and then described the contents of the bakery department. "The only thing that looks like something you'd like is a tray of brownies, but it's like nine bucks."

"How many brownies?"

"Seven on the top row."

"Buy it," I said. He laughed.

It had 16 brownies. We ate four (two each, warmed in the microwave with the ice cream on top). We kept three aside to enjoy as a family tomorrow. The remaining nine we wrapped individually in wax paper and taped shut and packaged into two freezer bags.

Total cost: $13.07 and that included half and half for our coffee.