Scratch Brownies

Baking on a day when you have nothing else to do is the best! I got up this morning and was full of cooking inspiration. Since I had nothing else to do, I was able to follow the inspirations where they led me. First, I made waffles topped with bacon and apples and a Gouda beer sauce (amazing creation, if I do say so myself!), and about an hour later I decided to try making brownies from scratch (I found a recipe online and decided to add a few tweaks of my own - chipotle powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and bacon grease).

My first thought was that brownies could not be that hard to make. I can make a cake from scratch, how can brownies be that different? That was until I got to the "brownies tend to get tough...don't go wild on the mixing" instructions. How much mixing is too much? With the baking powder biscuits I was told that you could end up with chewy and dense biscuits if you over-mixed, but no one has ever told me that about brownies. So, I mixed a little, and then a little more, but I just couldn't get rid of the big clumps of dough and "dust." I was worried about how dry it was.

It bothering me that there was nothing wet (e.g. milk, oil, etc.) in these brownies. The box mixes always call for something like that don't they? My dough seemed awfully dry to make anything worth eating. I've added these extra dry ingredients to box mixes without adjusting anything, so I figured it wouldn't make a difference here. However, when I changed the ingredients in the cheddar biscuits (see previous entry), I had to add milk to make the very dry and crumbly dough stick together. I looked up a few more recipes and found none that called for anything but the butter, eggs and dry ingredients I was using.

Putting the dough (I keep saying dough because that it what it was like to me, not batter-like at all) into the baking pan was difficult because it was so dry and clumpy. How are you supposed to pour big, dry, clumps into a pan and bake it? I attempted to spread it out, but didn't want to push it around too much for fear of "mixing it too much". There were parts where you could still see the pan and I was worried it would not melt/spread out when baking. At that point I was worried I had my first failure looming.

After about 20 minutes my husband said he smelled brownies, and they smelled good, which seemed to be a good sign. We looked in and they had risen and evened out just a bit. After the suggested cooling time we each tried one. I was afraid, but it smelled wonderful, and then, lo and behold, it tasted wonderful. My brownies were good and not tough or dry at all; my fears had been assuaged! My husband says the spices overpower the chocolate a bit, which he minds, but I don't! These brownies are not really cake-like, but they are not as heavy as fudge-like brownies, they seem to be a good mix. The bacon grease I greased the pan with adds a nice little flavor to the brownies and they are a bit spicy. It might sound like there is a lot going on there between the spices and bacon, but I think it all mixes well. Besides, mixing chocolate and bacon or chocolate and spiciness together is all the rage these days, so it seems natural that they would all go together.

As you know, I am not a big fan of chocolate, so the other flavors are one way to get me to eat brownies. If you are looking for an alternative to the plain chocolate brownie, you might want to try this. And, I guess I proved that it is good to see things through to the end (at least in baking) as they don't always turn out as bad you might think.

The original recipe can be found here. Below is the recipe with my additions. Enjoy!

Scratch Brownies

1 cup melted butter
2 cups white sugar
1 tsp vanilla flavoring
2 eggs
½ cup cocoa
2 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp chipotle powder
couple tbsp bacon grease

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cream margarine and sugar with a mixer.
After the creaming stage, switch to a spoon for mixing. Brownies tend to get tough if worked too much.
Add the vanilla and eggs and mix just until smooth.
Pour in cocoa, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon and chipotle powder. Again, mix until smooth and lumps are broken up. Don't go to wild on the mixing.
Grease 9x13 pan with bacon grease.
Spread dough out into pan and bake on 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes.
Cool brownies for 10 minutes before slicing.

Just for fun, here's a picture of our breakfast. This was a total experiment, and I strongly encourage experimentation in cooking. I started this baking adventure and blog as a way to drag myself off the couch and out of misery and have found that I am not only getting off that couch, I am learning and loving it. The more I learn, the more I want to experiment. I am not saying things will always work out, but why not have fun trying?

Cheddar Chipotle Biscuits

I LOVE cheese! Let's just get that out of the way, right away. I was once told that the hives I was experiencing was an allergic reaction to too much dairy. I cried for a week. Though there are many dairy substitutes available these days (soy, rice, veggie, etc.), nothing compared to plain old from-the-cow dairy. Since that awful doctor's visit, I have significantly cut down on the amount of dairy I eat and switched to mostly organic. However, there are days where I just have to indulge my cravings and have real cheese, and lots of it. These biscuits are a great way to do just that.


Cheddar Chipotle Biscuits:

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temp
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
pinch chipotle pepper
pinch salt
8 oz extra-sharp Cheddar
1 1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup milk


Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Combine butter, salt and peppers with mixer (on low)
Add flour and combine
Add cheese and milk and mix until ball forms
Wrap ball of dough in wax paper and refrigerate for 30 minutes. If you want to slice and bake, shape dough into a log before refrigerating.
Roll out dough to 1/4" thick on a lightly floured surface and cut biscuits with cookie cutter, or slice rounds from log that are 1/4" thick.
Place dough slices on parchment lined baking sheet and bake until edges are golden brown, about 18 minutes

Store at room temp in a Ziploc or airtight container



I got the original idea for these biscuits from Vegetable Matter. However, I didn't want to spend the money on white cheddar, so I used yellow cheddar, which is usually a few dollars cheaper. I don't know if that made a difference, but I found that my cheese and flour mix did not combine well, and there was much more cheese than anything, so I added the milk and a bit extra flour. I also switched the pepper from cayenne to chipotle, since I like chipotle and we have tons of it . I used the slice and bake method, as you can see in the picture above, which worked fine but gave me slightly misshapen biscuits.

These biscuits smelled delicious as they were baking and I couldn't resist taking one right off the pan and eating it hot. I gave my husband a bite and I guess he liked them; his exact reaction was "take that Red Lobster biscuits! I don't think any of these are going to make it into work, or even until morning." This recipe made 16 biscuits so we did have a few left the next day. Since these received such high praise, I think I will be making these again!