The Do’s and Don’t’s of Great Brownies

Tonight I’m making my can’t-fail : brownie recipe to take some treats into work tomorrow, which brought to might making a post out of it. Now, these brownies are very easy to make, but I thought it might be fun to track the finer details of the process to show what you should and shouldn’t do with this recipe. Keep in mind I said these are fudgie brownies–if you’re looking for cake-like or some other variation, theirs teh dorr. Let’s get started.

DO: get all the best ingredients together and have them ready to go. You’ll need:

• one 9×13″ pan, lined with parchment paper or foil
• an oven preheated to 350 degrees (F)
• 16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into 1/4″ pieces–don’t be a dick and buy Baker’s Secret; get at least Ghiradelli, and if you can find something better like Sharffenberger, Callebaut, Valrhona, or something like that, do it.
• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon good real vanilla extract (fuck clear/vanillin/flavour)
• 1/2 teaspooon salt
• 1 cup all-purpose flour

DO: consider also putting in something like 2 cups pecan, walnut, or hazelnut pieces, or a bag of chocolate chips, or good candied fruit of your liking; hell, even potato chips or pretzels.

DON’T: bring along a copy of John Krakauer’s Missoula: Rape And The Justice System In A College Town. While this is an excellent book, it is also a very tough and disheartening read, which is not the headspace you want to be in while making brownies. I’m only about a third of the way through, but it’s already a very rough and illuminating book, but not one that would aid in the process of making brownies.

DO: melt the butter in a small saucepan, and DO think about browning the butter if you have a pan with a nice shiny bottom–the browned butter flavor will add a lot to the finished product’s flavor. Once it’s off the heat, toss in the chocolate and let it sit there for a few minutes, then stir the mixture until all the chocolate has melted and it’s all smooth and glossy. Set that aside as you start the other steps.

DON’T: read the first section of John Krakauer’s Missoula: Rape And The Justice System In A College Town while doing this step. Not only will it distract you and you’ll likely burn the butter or forget to stir the chocolate, not to mention you’ll be so troubled by the tale of a college football player raping his long-time friend from childhood–a man who she considered an older brother–and nearly getting away from it, a tale capped by internet comments concerning the victim. It’s enough to make you frustrated with humanity and question your college years a little–again, not conducive to baking.

DO: Put the brown sugar in a large bowl and thoroughly whisk in one egg at a time (I recommend doing this by had with a good whisk), letting the mixture rest a little between each egg. Once all the eggs are incorporated, whisk in the white sugar, vanilla, and salt until fully incorporated, and then stir in the chocolate mixture. Add the flour in and gently mix until no white streaks remain. At this point, also gently mix in and nuts/chips/fruit/etc.

DON’T: continue to read John Krakauer’s Missoula: Rape And The Justice System In A College Town, since the next section that deals with a date rape by a young porn-obsessed virgin who tries to imitate porn on a sleeping victim involves not just descriptions from testimony and police reports that turn your stomach, but a prosecutor that not only seeks to protect the assailant after talking with him, does not even talk to the victim to get her side of the story or look at the evidence collected by the police, and declines to prosecute, but shows up to his school disciplinary hearing to testify on his behalf. It’s incredibly aggravating, and furious is not the right state for doing anything in the kitchen.

DO: pour the batter into the prepared pan, smooth the top out, and then bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out almost clean–just a little bit of underbaking these go a long way in adding to the fudgie delightfulness of these brownies. Cool completely on a rack.

DO: consider putting on a topping of some sort–your favorite chocolate frosting (or chocolate mint if you’re not THSU), cream cheese frosting, or, if you want to gild the lily, a double batch of these salted caramels but stopping the final cooking at about 250 degrees.

DON’T: keep reading John Krakauer’s Missoula: Rape And The Justice System In A College Town while the brownies are baking. I mean, it’s a powerful book that everybody should read, but reading about rapist frat boys who don’t have the self awareness to realize what they’re doing, police chiefs that believe debunked MRA-cited studies that say that 50% of rapes are false allegations, and these victims that face a system that fails them from the beginning and makes them relive their trauma again and again in order to try to find justice, well, it’s almost too much to take. Again, this is in the first third of this book, so it would be easy to get sucked into it while these are baking the brownies, and that might cause them to burn. Not to mention, it will likely ruin your appetite.

DO: cover the pan of brownies with foil once completely cooled and refrigerate overnight. You might want to eat them right away, but chilling them overnight really gets them so dense and awesome, so don’t skip that step. In the morning, get the entire block of brownies out of the pan and cut into whatever size you’d prefer. Put them in a nice sealable container and they’ll keep for the few days necessary it takes for you to gorge on them. If you’d like to save yourself a delicious treat, wrap them up in parchment/wax paper and then foil and freeze them. They’ll keep for a long, long time and can be revived with a short microwave blast once thawed.

DO: make these brownies often.

DO: read John Krakauer’s Missoula: Rape And The Justice System In A College Town. It’s a difficult subject matter, but incredibly important. Everyone should read this book.

DO: have a brownie while reading it. It’ll keep the dementors at bay.