The Truth About Celia

The really impressive thing is that in the process of entering my room and pouring water into my humidifier, I misplaced the book I was reading. Interesting. Well, I suppose it can't have gotten far.

Unlike the last few nights, I do not have a cross-stitch status picture to post. I did work on it, but only for a few hours, and then I got to tear out all that I had just done to restart it in the right place (one stitch farther down and to the left), so: crankiness. We're going to pretend I didn't work on it at all today, because i was so busy with my double batch of brownies.

Alas, they are also subpar. Perhaps it's just a sub par sort of day. Anyways, the bonus of having made brownies 4 times in the past week is that I now have the recipe memorized, and it's a FABULOUS recipe, even subpar. So, here goes.

2 oz unsweetened chocolate
4 oz bitter or semi sweet chocolate.
10 tablespoons unsalted butter
1.25 cups sugar
2 tsp vanilla

I didn't have real chocolate the first two times I made it, so i substituted cocoa powder and milkfat. The standard substitution is 3 Tbl cocoa + 1Tbl butter = 1 oz unsweetened chocolate. Semisweet, you add a tablespoon of sugar as well. So that would translate to:

1.25 cups cocoa powder
2 cups butter
1.5 cups sugar

Melt the butter in a double boiler (or, in my case, a metal mixing bowl over a pot of water), and mix with the cocoa powder until smooth. Take off the heat, add the vanilla--I use Trader Joe's Bourbon Vanilla, and once you try it in a baked good, you will NEVER go back--and then add the sugar.

3 whole eggs

Mix these in, one at a time. Mix each egg in completely before adding the next. I LOVE this step because it's really neat, watching the eggs smooth everything out. It ends up all thick and glossy.

1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup flour

Mix these in lightly, and then dump the batter into a 8x8 pan. Personally, I like putting aluminum foil in because it makes clean up easy as well as brownie storage. The batter that I envision is always about 40x thinner than I end up with (we have superdense flour, like a black hole), which I slop into a pan and then hope will fill in the corners as it bakes (so far, so good). They bake for 35-45 minutes at 325, and will be done when you have moist crumbs on a toothpick/knife check.

The good news is, thus far I haven't yet made the recipe properly, and they still haven't turned out badly. I overcooked them, and they were drier than optimal, but still wonderful. I cooked them too hot. I cooked them not hot enough. The flour's like a blackhole. They've always turn out good. Even today, when I tried with real chocolate (verdict: yuck) they were still good. Just not AS good. And just to be even happier, they take just one dish to make, though plenty of measuring utensils.

There's also a raspberry cream-cheese swirl, but I haven't worked that out yet properly. It's simple: package of cream cheese, an egg yolk, 1/2 tsp vanilla, and .25 cups sugar. But the first time I used whipped cream cheese, which had the right end texture, but much too little. This time I used the real stuff and never even got the texture right. I may need a real mixer for that. Anyways, you layer it .5 brownie batter, all cream cheese, rest of the batter, then dollop on raspberry jelly on the top and swirl artisticaly. (I suck at swirling, possibly because the batter is so thick) I tried the raspberry in with the cheesecake, but that's just made it sort of...sandwichy this time. SO I'm still working on that. Flavor wise? HEAVEN.

Anyways, the recipe comes from The Perfect Recipe, and seriously? No Joke. It's amazing. I have it labeled so no one can steal it from me. There's only a handful of recipes in it, but the author goes through each one and explains what she tried to get it right, and how and why they failed. I love it. (okay, the lobster section: not for the faint of heart). You should have a copy too. NOW!

Tomorrow, though, I won't be making brownies. This was just so I'd have some to share with my coworkers.