*whis­pers*  SHHHHH – c’mere.

I have a con­fes­sion – I’m one of “those” bak­ers – you know, the one that uses a box mix when I have to make brown­ies.  To quote one celebrity “per­son­al­ity”, I’m a cook, not a baker.  Bak­ing and I have issues – per­haps it was my dif­fi­culty with all things chem­istry in high school.  Per­haps its my “pinch of this, dash of that” men­tal­ity when I’m jazz­ing up a recipe.  Any way you look at it – bak­ing has been dif­fi­cult for me.  I applaud those that can bake and hope that with prac­tice, my bak­ing won’t be so heinous.

The Bare­foot Blog­gers went a bit out of the box – lit­er­ally – and selected the Bare­foot Contessa’s Out­ra­geous Brown­ies.  Now, I know I know – the Bare­foot Con­tessa has a box mix and don’t think I wasn’t tempted to cheat a bit know­ing my short­com­ings with all things mea­sur­ing cups and dou­ble boil­ers but then the catholic guilt zapped my behind and I sighed, looked at the recipe, rolled up my [vir­tual] sleeves and dove in.  Note, I had to halve the orig­i­nal recipe because I quite frankly didn’t have a pan that was 18 x 13 but fig­ured “eeeh – it’s like rid­ing a bike.”  *snort*

Short of send­ing my kitchen to hell with the heat­wave that’s in Cen­tral Florida, mak­ing a hell of a mess with every­thing in the kitchen sud­denly need­ing to go in the dish­washer or sink and the house smelling like a fudge fac­tory, I real­ized “By George, I think I got this bak­ing thing in check“.  Then, well – I got the brown­ies out of the oven and saw that they were a fudgy dense mess and tossed them back in the oven to crisp up a bit more.  Still not totally sold but you know what –they don’t suck.  I’ll have to test them on my guinea pigs SL and Kar tomor­row after they cooled. 

If you want to give it a shot, I dare you.  How­ever, make sure to read the com­ments and use exact mea­sure­ments.  Some­how I think I added TOO much choco­late but, as Ina Garten says “How Bad Can THAT Be”.

Now excuse me as I go savor my choco­lately por­tion of good­ness and try to not eat half of the pan.  Who cares how they look – the taste is def­i­nitely out­ra­geous.

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OUTRAGEOUS BROWNIES

Recipe cour­tesy of Ina Garten, The Bare­foot Contessa

Ingre­di­ents:

•  1 pound unsalted butter
• 1 pound plus 12 ounces semi­sweet choco­late chips, divided
• 6 ounces unsweet­ened chocolate
• 6 extra-large eggs
• 3 table­spoons instant cof­fee powder
• 2 table­spoons real vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, divided (1 cup for bat­ter and 1/4 cup in the chips and nuts)
• 1 table­spoon bak­ing powder
• 1 tea­spoon kosher salt
• 1 tea­spoon cin­na­mon (my lit­tle “improvisation”)

 Direc­tions

1. Pre­heat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Grease and flour a 13 by 18 by 1 1/2-inch sheet pan.
3. Melt together the but­ter, 1 pound choco­late chips, and unsweet­ened choco­late on top of a dou­ble boiler. Cool slightly.
4. Stir together the eggs, instant cof­fee, vanilla, cin­na­mon and sugar.
5. Stir in the warm choco­late mix­ture and cool to room temperature.
6. Stir together 1 cup of the flour, bak­ing pow­der and salt. Add to cooled choco­late mixture.
7. Toss the 12 ounces of choco­late chips with 1/4 cup flour to coat. Then add to the choco­late batter.
8. Pour into pre­pared pan.
9. Bake for about 30 min­utes, or until tester just comes out clean.
10. Halfway through the bak­ing, rap the pan against the oven shelf to allow air to escape from between the pan and the brownie dough. Do not over-bake!
11. Cool thor­oughly, refrig­er­ate well and cut into squares.