What I Don’t Know About Brownies. . . .

What I don’t know or understand about brownies could fill a cookbook. I have no interest in eating one, and I have never received high marks for the ones I’ve made. Looking at a brief comparison of four recipes shows one reason I might be excused for my incompetence:

People can’t even agree on the ratio of butter to flour, even when two of the recipes come from the same chef. And moving between those baked in 8″ square or 9″ x 13″ pans, you still can’t figure out how or why the ratios change.

Probably, you just found your favorite recipe once and stuck to it. Me? I have just avoided making brownies. I do have one post on this site that reviews a packaged brownie mix that turned out very well, but I haven’t made any from scratch since then. So, I can’t answer why I’m putting myself through the torture of making brownies from scratch, again, but here I am. The good news is that my husband will eat them even if he thinks they aren’t premium.

To save myself the further headache of trying to create a new recipe from these 4, I’m just going to take the first recipe in the list and double it for a 9″ x 13″ pan, with a few changes:

I bought semi-sweet instead of unsweetened chocolate, mostly because I don’t think straight when I buy chocolate
I’m leaving out the baking powder—I don’t like it in banana bread, so why would I use it here?
Most of the recipes use pecans, but I’m using walnuts
And, of course, I added salt

Surprisingly, these brownies were dubbed “Quite a brownie—chewy, fudgy, and with frosting.” Maybe I should save this recipe.

Fudgy Frosted Brownies

Servings: 24 2-inch brownies
Time: 45 mins
Difficulty: easy
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The brownies are adapted from The Martha Stewart Cookbook (1995) “Iced Brownies.”
The frosting is from Betty Crocker’s New Picture Cook Book (1961) “Creamy Cocoa Icing.”

Preheat oven to 350°; butter a 9″ x 13″ baking pan. I used a dark pan and the edges were pretty dark, but not burned. Stewart suggests a glass dish.

Brownies

2 sticks butter

4 oz semi-sweet baking chocolate

2 cups sugar

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 1/2 cups walnuts, barely chopped

Melt butter and chocolate in a double boiler, then set aside.
In large bowl, mix together dry ingredients.
Pour in butter and chocolate and mix until combined. I used a hand mixer.
Continue mixing, adding eggs and vanilla, until well combined. It makes a glossy batter.
Stir in nuts.
Pour into prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes. Test with a toothpick in the center.
Cool in pan, then frost and cut in 24 or more squares.