It’s been awhile. That’s kind of the theme for this place, not that anyone is really paying attention. In the end I like having this as a record of my baking/cooking and traveling adventures and to look back on for recipes that have worked (don’t usually publish things that don’t work because why keep that). The other night I decided to try my hand at some brownies. Aside from cookies and banana bread, I don’t do much in the way of sweets baking. D isn’t a huge cake person so haven’t really had a desire to do that. I am not opposed to pies though just haven’t got around to attempting anything. So brownies it was. I looked up a few different recipes and of course looked to Ina Garten since she has some good recipes (especially booze ones). I then kind of modified it to my own. D wanted to incorporate some peanut butter into it. I was initially going to do a PB swirl type thing but then elected to just use the peanut butter chips I had.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) of unsalted butter
• 3.5 ounce dark chocolate (had a bar of some random Russian chocolate)
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup peanut butter chips
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 3 eggs
• ~1 Tbsp cocoa powder
• 1 1/4 AP flour
• 1 packet (~ 1 Tbsp?) of instant coffee

Directions

1. Using a bain marie (I did a makeshift one with a small pot with simmering water and a metal bowl on top), I melted the chocolate and the dark chocolate bar.
2. I then mixed in the cocoa powder (probably could have added more as the final product didn’t come out as chocolatey as I was hoping).
3. In a separate bowl, mix together the sugar, vanilla, eggs and instant coffee
4. In 3rd bowl, mix the flour, salt, baking powder
5. After letting the chocolate mixture cool some, mix into the sugar/vanilla/egg mixture.
6. Coat some peanut butter and chocolate chips in flour
7. Fold in the flour mixture to the wet mixture from step #5. Then add in the chips.
8. Poured the final mixture onto parchment paper in a 8 by 8 pyrex pan
9. Baked at 350 F for about 30-35 minutes (until a toothpick came out clean)
10. Let sit on rack for 30 minutes and wait until cooled to cut.

Overall it came out pretty good. A bit more cake like than fudge like. As stated above, could use more cocoa powder. Overall a pretty simple recipe.

-StewsCat