First bake/s of the year!
Brownies were my first bake of the year!!
If I seem excited, it is only because never in all my baking life did i come across the terms "first bake" till recently and I got to know of it just in time to use it, so pardon my excitement over oh-so-trivial things. So, excitement aside, no, not really, I was very excited to make brownies for my first bake. Many of my friends were all "uhhhhh.okkkk.Tell me why are you excited again?" when I told them I was making brownies. They pointed out (some more dramatically then others) that my homemade list had at least 2 or 3 posts on brownies so it was nothing very revolutionARY so what is the BFD?
I told them in the voice you use when you are about to reveal a big secret that I was going to make THE BAKED BROWNIE from my spanking new BAKED recipe book. After standing there after revealing my news with a very super wide grin on my face as though I was going to gloat to my brothers about seeing Santa eating cookies and milk on Christmas Eve for about 10 seconds, I realized they had the same faces they had before I told them anything. There was one particular friend who laughed at me on Facebook saying "Haha! baked brownies". For those of you who are a bit slow, yeah, brownies are baked, I do not think their birthing place was anywhere else besides the oven. I finally realized that there are not many people that know what THE BAKED BROWNIE is unless you are in the U.S, you watch Oprah or you love baking and like me stalk a million and one (not that many) baking blogs and tastespot, foodgawk, etc every day so for those who know it, you know what I am talking about!! Awesomeness.
Of course, I would need to taste the real BAKED BROWNIE to know how mine fared but without eating the real one, like always, I always seem to have some missing ingredients and not do something right so I cannot really call it THE BAKED BROWNIE. Not yet. Until the day I can declare I did it perfect from step 1-10 using all the correct measurement pans and ingredients can I actually proclaim whether that something is THE something. I know it sounds just a tad bit extreme or I am making excuses for my poor baking skills but yes, there it is, really.
What did I miss out this time? White granulated sugar. I had a bout less than 1/4 cup left and so I used that 1/4 cup and added 1 +1/2 cups of light brown sugar when the recipe called for 1+1/2 cups granulated sugar and 1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar. I also put in a bit less of the dark chocolate because I am damn broke (IKR, it is the starting of the year and I am broke already?!) and that I had no time to go to the specific places which sold Valrhona here so I only bought 3 bars of 100g Lindt 70% Chocolate when they asked for 11 ounces. I also thought the Hershey's unsweetened cocoa powder was the dark unsweetened kind but I am thinking maybe not? If any cocoa powder expert is reading, please comment to enlighten me on this? I am also confused as to the instant espresso powder that I bought is actually instant espresso powder. So ingredients confusion+problems aside, I did not have a 9-by-13 inch so I used a 9-by-9 inch and I do not know if I overmixed, overbeated the batter at any point of time. So after all that...
So yes. That is my BAKED brownie. I "googled" THE BAKED BROWNIE on tastespotting and I realized they all looked different and I think none of them looked like the one in the book. If you have the book, you can compare mine with the book but mine is probably higher because I used a 9-by-9 inch instead of a 9-by-13 inch. Before I talk about the taste, I also on the same night/morning (it was after 12am) baked my go-to-brownies in which I used the Alice Medrich recipe using no chocolate and just cocoa powder.
The Alice Medrich recipe is my go-to recipe because it is very simple and you cant go wrong with it much and that it requires the least amount of equipment and that means less washing up to do. I absolutely detest washing dishes. Bleargh. I added nuts into my brownies this time which I normally try not to because my brothers both detest eating nuts almost as much as my dislike for washing dishes because I was bringing some to a party and some of my friends <3
If I seem excited, it is only because never in all my baking life did i come across the terms "first bake" till recently and I got to know of it just in time to use it, so pardon my excitement over oh-so-trivial things. So, excitement aside, no, not really, I was very excited to make brownies for my first bake. Many of my friends were all "uhhhhh.okkkk.Tell me why are you excited again?" when I told them I was making brownies. They pointed out (some more dramatically then others) that my homemade list had at least 2 or 3 posts on brownies so it was nothing very revolutionARY so what is the BFD?
I told them in the voice you use when you are about to reveal a big secret that I was going to make THE BAKED BROWNIE from my spanking new BAKED recipe book. After standing there after revealing my news with a very super wide grin on my face as though I was going to gloat to my brothers about seeing Santa eating cookies and milk on Christmas Eve for about 10 seconds, I realized they had the same faces they had before I told them anything. There was one particular friend who laughed at me on Facebook saying "Haha! baked brownies". For those of you who are a bit slow, yeah, brownies are baked, I do not think their birthing place was anywhere else besides the oven. I finally realized that there are not many people that know what THE BAKED BROWNIE is unless you are in the U.S, you watch Oprah or you love baking and like me stalk a million and one (not that many) baking blogs and tastespot, foodgawk, etc every day so for those who know it, you know what I am talking about!! Awesomeness.
Of course, I would need to taste the real BAKED BROWNIE to know how mine fared but without eating the real one, like always, I always seem to have some missing ingredients and not do something right so I cannot really call it THE BAKED BROWNIE. Not yet. Until the day I can declare I did it perfect from step 1-10 using all the correct measurement pans and ingredients can I actually proclaim whether that something is THE something. I know it sounds just a tad bit extreme or I am making excuses for my poor baking skills but yes, there it is, really.
What did I miss out this time? White granulated sugar. I had a bout less than 1/4 cup left and so I used that 1/4 cup and added 1 +1/2 cups of light brown sugar when the recipe called for 1+1/2 cups granulated sugar and 1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar. I also put in a bit less of the dark chocolate because I am damn broke (IKR, it is the starting of the year and I am broke already?!) and that I had no time to go to the specific places which sold Valrhona here so I only bought 3 bars of 100g Lindt 70% Chocolate when they asked for 11 ounces. I also thought the Hershey's unsweetened cocoa powder was the dark unsweetened kind but I am thinking maybe not? If any cocoa powder expert is reading, please comment to enlighten me on this? I am also confused as to the instant espresso powder that I bought is actually instant espresso powder. So ingredients confusion+problems aside, I did not have a 9-by-13 inch so I used a 9-by-9 inch and I do not know if I overmixed, overbeated the batter at any point of time. So after all that...
So yes. That is my BAKED brownie. I "googled" THE BAKED BROWNIE on tastespotting and I realized they all looked different and I think none of them looked like the one in the book. If you have the book, you can compare mine with the book but mine is probably higher because I used a 9-by-9 inch instead of a 9-by-13 inch. Before I talk about the taste, I also on the same night/morning (it was after 12am) baked my go-to-brownies in which I used the Alice Medrich recipe using no chocolate and just cocoa powder.
The Alice Medrich recipe is my go-to recipe because it is very simple and you cant go wrong with it much and that it requires the least amount of equipment and that means less washing up to do. I absolutely detest washing dishes. Bleargh. I added nuts into my brownies this time which I normally try not to because my brothers both detest eating nuts almost as much as my dislike for washing dishes because I was bringing some to a party and some of my friends <3
Then it was brownie-off time!
I did a little survey while my friends and family were happily munching on these brownies and almost all of them preferred my go-to brownies to the BAKED one. However, this is as they say not a very fair experiment and there will definitely be a "re-match" once I master the art of baking THE BAKED BROWNIE and make sure there are no nuts in the Medrich one. Looking forward to it!
I know this entry is already super long and if you are tired reading, feel free to click the "X" at the top right hand corner. For those who like me love long letters and blog posts. Here is a rather long P.S. I used to when I started baking hate brownies because I never seem to get it right. It always turned out a flop or too cakey. Then one day, I found my go-to recipe for brownies and I decided to give brownies a second chance and the rest is history as they say as I never looked back. I am not really going to espouse any grand theory or morals here but sometimes, all it takes is some faith and luck!:)
I know this entry is already super long and if you are tired reading, feel free to click the "X" at the top right hand corner. For those who like me love long letters and blog posts. Here is a rather long P.S. I used to when I started baking hate brownies because I never seem to get it right. It always turned out a flop or too cakey. Then one day, I found my go-to recipe for brownies and I decided to give brownies a second chance and the rest is history as they say as I never looked back. I am not really going to espouse any grand theory or morals here but sometimes, all it takes is some faith and luck!:)
