Currently viewing the tag: "brownies"
it is a wonderful feeling to find your soul mate… ya know, the one you were meant to be with, and everyone in your presence can’t help but agree; the one where when someone bites into the two of you together a big smile comes over their face– wait, wha??? i wonder if peanut butter cookies and fudgy chocolate brownies know how perfect they are together. while this blog is certainly no stranger to peanut butter and chocolate treats, nor pillow cookies, this is the first time i have shown you a brownie-stuffed peanut butter cookie, and it is about darn time. my sincere apologies. (in my defense, at least i showed you peanut butter-stuffed chocolate cookies).
it was birthday time on my team again– this time for kevin, who runs eleet music, so the logical cake choice for him was music-related. i considered one that was shaped like a musical note, but i realized that since i don’t have a pan shaped like that i would be cutting from a half-sheet, which would result in less cake. and around here, we like more cake! i went with what i thought was the next best thing, decorating a cake with a bar of “happy birthday to you”. when i was looking up the sheet music, i found that no two were identical (different keys, etc), so i just picked one. turns out that i still can’t decorate a cake very well…but it’s the thought that counts. right…? i hope so.
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even though betty crocker’s boxed mix didn’t cut it this time around, one of their recipes came out good, but pretty heavy! seriously, these things were by far the heaviest of all of them.
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i knew i wanted to throw a boxed mix into the game, since that is what got this whole thing going, but as you will read in contestant zero the box i usually use wasn’t working out. on the advice of my friend ed, i tried the Ghirardelli one.
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as you may recall, the whole reason i started this contest is because my favorite brownies came for a box, so i had planned on sneaking the box brownies into the mix and not telling you until after the reviews were in…except i ran into one problem– they must have changed the ingredients of the box mix. i have been using betty crocker original supreme for years (the one with the hershey’s syrup) and know exactly how they should come out. everyone always raved about them and when i admitted they were from a box people were in disbelief.
in the past two weeks i made that box three times, and each time i had to give them away instead of entering them in the contest. i thought maybe it was my oven, but everything else i have made came out fine. i thought it was the different brand of oil that i used, but then i bought the kind i usually use and it didn’t help. the only thing i can think of is them having changed the recipe.
in any case, contestant zero is a dud. so now i *have* to decide on the perfect from scratch recipe since i no longer have a fall-back!
i was baking two at a time so that i could make it through the list faster without having to bake every night, plus i thought it might be good to give some basis for comparison, however i have received a number of judge responses that just say “i like the second one better”, which won’t help too much when trying to remember them, or give feedback for the readers who are trying to pick one that they might like to make. hopefully doing one at a time will resolve this [o:
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a testament to how frazzled i am: i knew i was planning on making two batches of brownies today, yet i didn’t even check to see if i had enough eggs. in fact, i knew i did not have enough eggs because eggs are actually on my grocery list twice. yes, twice. yet, i did not remember to pick some up. i waited until after the third batch was done baking, then i went to the store to go get eggs and some snack-size bags to create the samples to be picked up.
i have made the decision not to post what recipe i used until the reviews are in (they are now in, so the title indicates that), that way no preconceived notions of a source or ingredients can throw off the judgement. i know, i know…the first two i revealed the source for ahead of time and that isn’t really fair, blah blah blah. don’t worry, it’ll be okay.
just as quickly as i posted my search, i received a recipe from my friend micki. she says that she doesn’t like brownies, but she loves these. it might be sentimental value since they are her grandmother’s recipe, but i trust her opinion on food! i immediately let these jump the line since all the others were from people i do not know.
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when i lived with my mother, i recall her always cutting the edges off brownies. she said it was because people liked them better without the edges and they look nicer that way…and then we would all fight over eating the scraps. i never really stopped to think about the irony of nobody wanting to eat the ends while we cherished these pieces. then, a few years ago i struck up a conversation with my friend ed, who was looking for an end piece on the brownies i had brought in. it turns out there is quite the market for end pieces, so much so that they even make a pan that makes every piece an end piece. since then, i have left the end pieces on all of my bars, forgoing the nice neat look… unless of course it is for a gift platter, in which case a nice clean neat finish is important (barring a request to include them).
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