Favorite Brownies

These are my favorite brownies and now that I’m feeling well after an icky cold I just had to make some. They take less than an hour from start to finish so they’re perfect for mid-week craving. The best part: the book the recipe comes from. One of those beautifully yellowed, well worn cookbooks from the ’70’s (1979).

Isn’t that a pretty sight? If you gave this book turn to page 50 and use the Chocolate Brownie recipe there.
Here it is for those unfortunate souls who suffer without this great book (maybe check your library?!):
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup butter melted
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cocoa (I use Dutch process cocoa but the book calls for Hershey’s, of course- it doesn’t matter which you use)
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped nuts optional (I can’t stand nuts in brownies but throw them in if you must)
Beat the eggs in a mixer and gradually add sugar and vanilla. Mix in butter. Add dry ingredients gradually until well blended. Stir in nuts of you choose to. Spread mix into an 8 inch square pan and bake for about 30 minutes in a 350 oven. They’re done when they start to pull away from the edges of the pan. That will give a perfectly chewy, chocolatelty, delicious brownie. Cool for about 10 minutes for warm brownies or longer for firmer ones. Dust with powdered sugar and gobble ’em up!

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Great End to a Great Day: Raspberry Brownies

Sometimes we are lucky enough to have an amazingly beautiful weekend to enjoy and actually be productive with it. After breakfast and about an hour at the dog park we headed to David’s Bridal to try on some bridesmaid dresses. I did the trying and Kevin helped snap me up, although it might have been more fun the other way around. 😉 After dresses we headed home to meet the auto glass guys who put in a new window in what must be some kind of record-10 minutes!? At about 3 we headed to the greenhouse for a rhodie, azalea and cool tree whose name I forget right now. But it has berries and is super gorgeous. We proceeded home to plant them in a strip of our front yard where we ripped up grass yesterday. Well, our friend ripped up the grass in about 1/4 of the time it would have taken us, but that’s another story. Anyway, in a strip about 3 feet wide and 15 feet long we now have beautiful shrubbery (slightly layered, etc. and we didn’t even have to say Ni! to get it!) with nice wood chunks covering bare ground. I’ll put some flowers in later.

Anyway, following all this hard work we were a little tired and hungry. Luckily, Sunday night I made these:

Raspberry Brownies

Here’s the recipe: Decadent Raspberry Brownies

Basically it’s an excellent brownie recipe which you spread raspberry jam on followed by a kind of rich chocolate frosting (semi-sweet chocolate and heavy cream). What really makes ours special, in my opinion, is the jam which comes from a farm across the park. If you live in Vancouver or happen to be in the East Minnehaha area, stop by and say hello to the nice lady and dog at Kunze Farms. Their produce is to die for and at a great price. And the only raspberry jam I’ve ever tasted that was better than theirs is my great grandmas.

For those of you who may see this before heading to the library…these brownies will be there and if you ask nicely…

Chewy, Fudgy Brownies

These brownies are not for the faint of heart. So rich. So chewy. So divine. I found the recipe here and decided, for once, to change nothing. Add a little powdered sugar to the top for decoration, but otherwise make these exactly how the recipe states. They are so perfect!

I’ve made brownies many times before, of course, but never this recipe so it is still new, right? I was craving brownies so badly I just had to make some! Perhaps it is because of the proximity to Valentine’s Day, but all I can think of is chocolate, cherries, decadence, and love. Next weekend I plan to make chocolate covered cherries (they need to sit for about a week in a cool area to be perfect) to take on our romantic getaway to the beach. If you are also seeing red try one of these recipes: White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake, Raspberry Brownies. If there is one thing I have learned in my relationship with Kev it’s that good food is the best gift. If you aren’t feeling especially domestic you can always go for the tried and true chocolate covered strawberries. Who doesn’t love those?!

Check back this weekend for chocolate covered cherries, as well as my grandma’s famous Valentine’s candy recipe (friends know it as the peppermint Christmas candy I failed to make in 2009). Super easy, but very special you will want to make this recipe part of your family tradition just as it has been a part of mine.

Hope you all have a lovely week!