Girty’s Useless Crap

So someone recently asked me about baking brownies. I thought I’d post a recipe with suggestions.

Get some chocolate. Now, right here you have decisions to make. Since you’re going to add a buttload of sugar, I would recommend something unsweetened. Your brand is entirely up to you, but you’ll need 4 oz.

Throw that in a bowl with 1 1/2 sticks of UNSALTED butter.

Let’s talk about butter here for a second. It should always be unsalted. ALWAYS DO YOU HEAR ME? I know they make it salted and it supposedly lasts longer but guess what? You can FREEZE butter. So buy it on sale and freeze it, but buy the UNSALTED butter. You can add salt but you can’t take it away. Be a control freak- get unsalted butter.

Ok where were we? Oh yea, you have some chocolate and a mutherload of butter. Throw all that in a bowl and stick it in the microwave. That’s not a metal bowl is it? Good. You don’t have a microwave? That’s weird, but if you don’t have a microwave you can do a double boiler to melt the chocolate and butter. What’s a double boiler? Jeez. Well just put the stuff you wanna melt into a bowl (metal, in this case, would be a good choice) and put it on top of another (smaller) saucepan that has simmering water it in. The gentle heat from the simmering water will melt the chocolate without mayhem.

So you’ve got your chocolate and butter melting away in the micrometer or the double boilermaker, right? OK, then take two cups of sugar and set that aside, scramble three eggs and a tablespoon of vanilla and set that aside, then take a cup of flour (sifted, all purpose) and set that aside. When your chocolate is all gooey and melted and looking like a warm pile of sex you will have three things (at least) standing at the ready- eggyvanilla, sugar and flour. Diggit? Cool. Onward…

If you planned well, the chocolate was melted in a BIG microwaveable bowl so you can just start dumping into the same bowl the chocolate was melted in. You did plan ahead, right? Good, so go ahead and throw the sugar into the chocolate and start mixing away.

Wait wait wait, what is that? Do you have a mixer in your hand? Srsly? That’s totally unnecessary, dude, we’re just making brownies here. It’s a rustic, country kind of food, put the mixer away and save it for the homemade marshmallows or angel food cake when you really need it. All you need for this trip is a spoon and a bowl and a baking dish.

So your sugar is all incorporated into the happy chocolate sex goodness, right? Cool, then you can add the eggs. Don’t add the eggs before the sugar, OK? No, really that’s a bad idea. Mix those eggs in until is pretty well incorporated then you can bring the flour into the party.

Is it all together and looking like batter? Great. Now, here’s where you have a decision to make. What kind of brownies are we making today? Are we feeling purist? If so, then carry on. If not, then read past the baking part for ideas…

Throw that tasty batter into a greased baking vessel of your choosing. That could be a 13×9 baking dish, or it could be something else. If it’s a 13×9 pan you can bake that bad boy for about 30 minutes on 350. If it’s something else, well, man I dunno what to tell you but you should hang out in the kitchen for awhile. Grab a beer and watch that oven, M’kay? Burnt brownies make people cry.

So that’s it. Pretty simple and really no reason in the world to purchase mixes at all. Homemade brownies kick the crap out of that stuff in the box every time.

But what if you’re not feeling very pure? Check out these options:

Bake the brownies in a muffin pan and smush a peanut butter cup on the top before baking! Insanity! (take the wrapper off the peanut butter cup, y’doof!)

Throw in a cup of chopped nuts. Traditionally that would be walnuts but I’m allergic to them so I would go with Pecans. What about Macadamia, though? That would be sick, wouldn’t it?

You can stir in M&Ms, chocolate chips, smash a big chocolate kiss on top of the brownies where each piece will be, and you know they’ve got all those amazing different KINDS of chocolate kisses you could experiment with. What about cordial cherry kissed brownies? You could stir in butterscotch chips or tiny pieces of marshmallows. Melt some caramel and mix that in there, or swirl it. Wanna get really nuts? How about dried cranberries and crushed whole espresso beans?

Go ahead, get crazy!

For years I’ve had a secret fear. Something that haunts me and I have let this singular terror hold me back from things in life.

I have a fear of zippers.

Now, it’s not a problem if they’re already sewn to something I’m using. Rather I’ve had serious issues with putting a zipper on anything I’m sewing.

GOD BLESS THE INTERWEBS. Remember that post I recently wrote on the miracle of the Internet? Well, tack this on to the large, long list of ways it’s enriched my life. Online tutorials.

Online tutorials helped me learn to knit, then eventually crochet which I do almost every day. Online tutorials remind me of things I know how to do, but the basic composition of it eludes me when I’m out of practice (like the proper ratios for Bechamel sauce between the fat, flour and liquid) so when I need this information I turn to my laptop instead of wasting time straining for the information myself.

Anyway, I fear zippers no more! Thanks to the internet I’ve overcome my fear. When I have a minute, I will post pictures of what I made. It’s nothing earth shattering, just a couple of zipper pouches, BUT THEY’RE ZIPPERS!

And God bless whoever invented the zipper foot. What a great thing that is!