I feel the need to express in this post that I am NOT making a "healthy eating blog". I love sugar. My family loves sugar. All in all we go through TOO MUCH sugar from the baking that goes on in this house! I get irritated when I have to buy a 5 pound bag of sugar in a pinch at the grocery store when I know for a fact that I can get the 10 pound bag of Imperial Sugar at Costco for the same price. Plus, 5 pounds isn't enough to get me through two weeks of cooking, baking, syrup making, family-night-treating and life in general at the Davis house. Fact.
Funny thing happened Sunday... I ran out of sugar in the middle of making Hot Fudge. Opps. Lucky for me, my sweet neighbor across the street was out playing with her kids. I marched over in my apron, ziplock in hand and asked, "Portia, could I borrow some sugar? I just ran out! Who goes through 5 pounds of sugar in a week!!??" Her reply cemented in my mind what I've already confessed, "Jo, you are the only person I know who would!"
Indeed, we do love sugar over here.
The following is a recipe given to me by the lovely Emily Stark. She is an amazing woman. Someone I've admired for years. I have omitted coconut and nuts and added chocolate chips. I've loved this recipe and all its glorious sugar for a LONG time. Since having this recipe, I have purchased a brownie mix once... Three weeks ago to be exact. I debated making my own, but I had signed up for a specific kind of commercial brownie, and wanted to follow through with what I'd been asked to do!
Brownie RULES:
DO NOT OVER MIX YOUR BROWNIES or they will turn out like cake. If I'm going to eat all the calories in a brownie, I have to say I turn into a bit of a food snob. I will not eat a cake-y brownie. Brownies are supposed to be gooey and moist and NOT CAKE. When you are mixing a brownie batch, mix the dry ingredients together as much as you'd like. Then, in a separate bowl, mix the wet ingredients together... as much as you'd like! BUT, when you mix them together... STOP when all the dry ingredients are moistened. Even let it sit for a few minutes (10 if you need to set a timer) before you pull it into a baking pan.
This original recipe is for a 9X9 pan. If you need to make a 9X13 pan of brownies it will be 1 and 1/2 of this recipe and add 10 minutes to bake.
2 cups sugar
1 ½ cups flour
½ cup cocoa
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
(OR 1/2 cup semi-sweet and 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips)
½ cup butter, melted
4 eggs, beaten
½ teaspoon vanilla
Pre-heat oven to 375.
In a glass bowl (or whatever is NOT metal...) melt the butter in the microwave.
Add beaten eggs and vanilla when the butter is a little cooled.
In a mixing bowl combine and mix all dry ingredients.
Make a well in the middle of your dry ingredients.
Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients until just barely combined.
Grease a 9 X 9 baking pan with refined coconut oil (coconut oil WITHOUT the coconut flavor), and dust with sugar.
Pull brownie mixture into pan and level it out before putting in the oven.
Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes.
