A Gift of Brownies

I'm not sure where this instinct in me originates from, but whenever I feel stuck for a little gift to give someone, I give food. For example, when I feel Mr. A&N deserves a bit of attention, I'll go off and buy him some nice sausages or a pork pie. If we're going around to a friend's for dinner, I'll bring homemade jam or some cake. I've lost all perspective on whether or not this is normal. Today's situation is that an environmentally-conscious pregnant friend is about to have a special event; flowers are out, booze is out, but brownies, I've determined, are very, very in.

Brownies are my go-to baked product. During my time as a graduate student several years back, I would spend evenings in the pub (over the year, I studiously worked my way up to 4 pints a night without being completely annihilated), skipping food since that was too pricey, and then stumble my way home, whip up a batch of brownies, and eat half the pan before drunkenly falling into bed. I'm still sometimes amazed my body survived that year of nutritional deprivation. I've tweaked the brownie recipe slightly over the years, but the basic recipe has stayed the same due to their slightly-crispy-crust-with-slightly-gooey insides that many other brownies just fail to deliver on and which I can't get enough of. So in my book of ideas that might-or-might-not be normal, they're an excellent special-event-run-by-a-pregnant-friend gift.



Brownies
Fits comfortably in an 8x8in baking tin, or equivalent

• 1/2 C / 110 g unsalted butter
• 1 C granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 shot of espresso or 1 spoonful of instant coffee, dissolved in a bit of hot water
• 1/2 C cake flour
• 1/3 C + 1 Tbs cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
  

1. Pre-heat oven to 175 C.
2. Melt the butter in a saucepan over a medium low heat, taking care not to sizzle it.
3. When melted, turn off heat and let sit for a minute or so to cool. Stir in the sugar.
   
4. Add both eggs, vanilla extract, and coffee, and stir well.
5. Sift together the dry ingredients, and add to the wet ingredients.
6. Grease and flour the baking pan, and pour the brownie batter into it.
7. Cook in the middle of the oven for 20-25 minutes, or until a skewer emerges mostly clean (there will be a bit of goo on it since these are slightly fudgey brownies).
8. Allow to cool in the pan for a ouple of minutes, then cool on a cooling rack.
   

Competitive Baking Day

A few weeks ago, some friends had the foresight to call a competitive baking competition. Are there sweeter words to my ears? I love baking, and I can't help but be competitive, so this was a combination I was destined to take seriously.

After planning my recipe for several days, sourcing the ingredients, and spending a fair amount of sweat putting together my Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake Brownies with a Oatmeal Cookie crust, I discovered an hour before we went that they were terrible. Utterly awful. I had doubled the brownie amount without getting a large anough dish, so the top and bottom had burnt and the middle was raw. I panicked but decided to stick with the brownie theme: I'm a brownie maven, and can create a batch from scratch within 4 minutes (minus cook time) even when drunk. Being American, I know a good from bad brownie and I have a good recipe. So batch number 2 became brownies with a peanut butter topping (seen below, decorated with hearts and stars. HEARTS AND STARS. Bring on the accolades).
All entries were graded on 5 seperate criteria, with you not being allowed to award yourself any points:

• Taste
• Texture
• Presentation/implied effort
  
• Originality
• Carbon Footprint

Taste, being all important, was saved until last and received double the points. How did I do? I was in the lead, resoundingly (except for taking a clobbering on the carbon footprint - darn North American peanut butter)...until it came time to the taste round.

One by one, everyone gave me the least number of points available. Reasons? They didn't like peanut butter. The brownies were a bit dense. They 'just didn't like them'. These. These brownies, which when I sampled them, made me think: 'this is the best batch you've ever done'. I didn't just tate brownie when I ate them, I tasted victory.

C'MON PEOPLE! Don't like peanut butter??! Too dense (and this from my husband, too)!? I've lain awake many a night since this bake-off, wondering where things went wrong. Had some of them never tasted a real brownie before? Were they beaten as children while their school teacher made them eat brownies? I don't have an answer, I just know this was a dark day for my soul and that I haven't baked a batch of brownies since.