Ala-Khazam Brownies

I have not been cooking long and have been blogging for even less time. However, there is someone out there who thinks that I CAN cook/bake and has sent me a delightful recipe to tryout.

And I have done so!

So, as the faithful folklorist that I hope to become, I will transcribe this recipe exactly as it was given to me by the talented and wonderful Ms. Khazzam.

Fudgie Brownies
1 ⅓ cups all purpose white flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup butter or canola oil
1 cup cocoa
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
1 cup chopped nuts, (optional)


Preheat oven to 350 O F
1) Stir: flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl
2) Melt butter
3) Stir in the cocoa
4) Add sugar, eggs and vanilla
5) Mix in dry ingredients
6) For Cookies: scoop about 50 cookies of one tablespoon of batter each on cookie sheet. Bake for about 10 min.
For Brownies: pour batter in 13x9x2 inch baking pan. Bake in oven for 30 to 35 min.


Now, here's what I managed to do with this fabulous recipe:


To start, in general, I don't believe in two-bowl cooking. I feel that any recipe you plan on doing in your home kitchen should be simple enough that it can done in one bowl and cooked in one pan/cooking tray/skull of you enemy/etc. Also, I only own one mixing bowl at the moment... but this recipe was a gift and I was bound and determined to make these brownies.


Ms. Khazzam, for you, I broke out my giant measuring cup and made it double as a bowl. Simple really. I heated up the butter in the measuring cup (I love having a microwave! My man and I found it in the crawl space, left here by some previous owner, and it actually works!) and added the cocoa, eggs, vanilla and sugar. It was a thick, chocolaty, sticky mess that ended up all over my face and apron, but it worked.


Now, for the second problem. I don't own a brownie pan. Also, I didn't know this until I was ready to pour my brownie batter into said, fictitious brownie pan...


Did I:
a) eat the batter raw, Salmonella risk and all?
b) make cookies out of the batter?
c) improvise?

If you picked a or c, then you know me quite well. I did indeed help myself to a thoughtful spoonful of batter as I contemplated my next step. Then I broke out a round, ceramic cooking dish. I think it's actually meant for large soufflés or casseroles.

I gave it a new identity. Welcome to the world, round brownie pan!

Now, there was just one more problem... how long should I bake the 3 1/3 inch deep brownie for? The outside (edges) cooked in the allotted amount of time, but the middle stubbornly remained in pudding form for as long as it could. When the whole thing finally reached a place of 'cooked'-ness, I ran into another problem.

This one is new, even for a kitchen catastrophe like me. Since my dish was ceramic, the brownies kept baking even when they were out of the oven!! I had no clue this was going to happen until I tried to cut up my brownies and found that they were... shall we say, dry?

Milk made them go down just fine, but still... damn you round brownie pan!

Anyway, the recipe is amazing. It's really simple, even with the two bowls and chocolaty like you wouldn't believe!

Cheers!