Almost Winter Brownie Experiment

I saw someone make brownies from scratch recently and it looked unnecessarily complicated. How can it be that hard? I'M gonna make brownies, I thought. We'll see how easy this really is.

I made this rash decision while standing in the store without a recipe. I figured I had everything I needed at home except the chocolate. My choices were bittersweet (or is it unsweetened?) baking chocolate or chips, semi-sweet chocolate or chips, or Dutch process cocoa powder. I decided to go for the latter because it sounded exotic. I mean, it's DUTCH, right?! A small bag (about 1.5 cups) cost around $3.50.

I got home and checked ValleyWriter's brownie recipes, but it turns out she uses semi-sweet chips. Gah! Next I googled. That is how I found Best Cocoa Brownies at epicurious. This is it, I thought.

Then the madness began. First, you're supposed to put a heatproof bowl in a skillet of barely simmering water. I have a gas stove, so how is this different than putting a heatproof bowl directly on the gas? (It just sits on the bottom of the skillet, right over the flame. Then the barely simmering water starts evaporating fast because it's in such a wide container. I almost wished I owned a microwave, even though microwaving is not in the recipe.)

Next, melt and stir the mixture until it is smooth and almost too hot to touch. I liked this step because I kept having to put my finger in the chocolate to test it. Then I'd lick it off. Except this got tiresome after the stuff REFUSED to heat up. I had preheated my oven by this time, so I decided to cheat and stick the bowl in the oven for 5 minutes. The mixture never did get smooth (that is, the sugar I used never melted, but was still crunchy even after the oven). Whatever.

Next step. That would be to... wait. I was bad at this part too. I was supposed to wait until the mixture was cool enough that it wouldn't scramble the 2 cold eggs I was adding. Instead, I decided that if I stirred really really quickly, the eggs wouldn't even have time to scramble. This worked to some extent. What little scrambling I did see was quickly stirred out of existence. Finally I added the flour and beat it 40 more times, per the recipe.

Then into the foil-lined pan (for easy dislodging of the super-dense brownies). Notice that other than eggs, there is no leavening in this recipe. The result is like one of those flourless death-by-chocolate cakes. I was supposed to bake it until a toothpick in the middle was still a bit sticky. I baked it an extra five minutes because it just seemed TOO sticky.

The result--super-dark brownie-shaped chocolate bombs. The ones toward the middle of the pan had the pudding-like vibe mentioned in the recipe notes. The ones toward the outside were a tiny bit cakier (i.e., cooked through more). I kind of wish this recipe had used a double boiler and, um, a blender. But the brownies were not bad. Not bad at all. Please just make sure you have about 90 minutes to bake in, plus 2+ hours of cooling time!