On Brownies and Branching Out
Mmmmm… I love brownies. Chocolatey, fudgy, easy to make goodness. So do my brother and my father (my mother is a chocolate hater, sadly). The thing about brownies is that they aren’t really a challenge to make. Why is this an issue? I thought you might ask. Well, I am pretty lazy, but when I bake, I want to actually challenge myself (but not too much).
You see, when I make brownies, it gets a little monotonous. I use the same recipe every time (this one). It’s delicious, don’t get me wrong. But there’s something just bleak about always making the same recipe. I actually used to love how easy it was, but now I like to experiment (just a tad).
You might wonder why I’m telling you all this, and to understand that, I would need to go back in time about a month ago, when I learned the true importance of tweaking my recipes. It was the peak holiday season, and I intended to bake brownies. I turned on my computer to the recipe and started melting chocolate and taking out the flour. For someone who has made the recipe so many times, it took me awfully long to realize that the recipe I normally use didn’t include melted chocolate. Oops- I had opened the wrong recipe in Allrecipes.
The stress set in. I kinda sorta maybe have a habit that includes not reading a recipe fully before I start baking or cooking. But that’s ok! This is fixable, I thought to myself. The worst that could happen would be a pan of ruined brownies. I hadn’t even added anything together yet!
I unmeasured the flour and then remeasured it according to my usual recipe. I didn’t like the recipe that I had accidentally started, and since the only undoable thing I had done was melting some chocolate, I decided to stick to the regular recipe.
As I was making the brownies, the melted chocolate was just staring me in the face. Pour flour. Look at melted chocolate. Whisk dry ingredients. Look at melted chocolate. So, after some thought, I realized that somewhere in the 10,000 comments on the recipe page I could find something about adding in some extra melted chocolate.
Sure enough, a well-reviewed review (is that even a thing? I guess you would say that a lot of people gave it a thumbs up for being helpful) turned up and said that adding in a little bit of melted chocolate, which is what I happened to have on hand, would make the brownies fudgier. I love fudgy brownies, so if the comment was accurate, then I would be just ok! Still, it felt weird not to be following the recipe.
While I had altered recipes before, the extent was probably adding potato chips and pretzels into my chocolate chip cookie recipe (they’re delicious, trust me). Adding a whole new component could mess up the chemistry of the brownie.
In short, I wasn’t sure about the melted chocolate. I added it in and it looked good, but I worried that it would explode in the oven- you can never be too cautious.
I poured the batter into the pan and about 20 minutes later, I peered in the oven. There sat a pan of brownies. I didn’t get too excited, but the oven not exploding was a good sign.
A few minutes later, I took them out. They looked wonderful. The brownies had a nice crinkly top spotted with a few chocolate chips. When we cut into them, they were fudgy in the middle and crispy on top. A perfect brownie, if I do say so myself.
This seems normal, but having made this recipe before, I did notice that the top was crinklier and the inside was fudgier. I was elated! Not only had my horrible mistake turned out okay, but it also led to the best pan of brownies ever.
This story isn’t just about how sometimes messing up isn’t always as bad as it seems. Honestly, I didn’t make any revolutionary discoveries about the brownie, you could read what I discovered in any dessert recipe book, even probably dating back to the ice age.
Really, this is all about my letting go of the need to always follow the most basic of recipes. From the great discovery and on, I’ve played with the amount of melted chocolate that I put into the brownies, added peppermint extract and candy canes, and mixed in extra unmelted chocolate chips. I haven’t just done these adjustments out on a limb- I often research before I add even an extra smidge of salt to my recipes.
I had always thought that a recipe was a strict script to be followed, but now, especially with something as basic as brownies, I’ve realized that I can change it a little to be more to my tastes. It’s way more rewarding, and it tastes a whole lot better too!
P.S. If you want to make this altered recipe, you would follow the Allrecipes recipe that I linked above almost exactly, but at the end add in about 1/4 cup of melted chocolate and about 1/2 cup of unmleted chocolate chips or pieces. Also, I encourage you to play around with the recipe. Add in some peppermint sticks or peanut butter cups. The brownies are your canvas. Let your creativity run wild! 🙂
My mouth watered the entire time I was reading this. And it’s a good tip for me as a novice cook, too. But mostly, I have to go find a brownie somewhere.
Looks really good! Thanks for the tips.