CJ's Recipe for Almost Brownies

[cjsmith]

0. Book with recipe
1. 3oz. semi-sweet chocolate
2. 3oz. ... oops, I only have 2oz. unsweetened chocolate
3. Another ounce of semi-sweet to make up for it
4. Butter, flour, eggs, etc
5. A nut grinder
6. 2pr. pliers
7. Oven which, on Saturday, took 2hrs instead of 1hr to make meatloaf

Open book. Realize that the worst part of this whole brownie thing is chopping up the chocolate. Get out the nut grinder. Attempt to chop up chocolate with nut grinder. Produce tiny volume of what appears to be cocoa powder. Hear bad noise. Stop.

Open up nut grinder. Use pliers to rearrange all the cutting tines. Alternately crank and pry until bad noise stops. Give up and chop the chocolate the "hard" way. Get surprised by how fast and easy the "hard" way is.

Melt chocolate and butter, add eggs etc, pour into pan.

Burn the whole thing because the oven has now decided to cook faster than normal.

Comments

Re: Chopping chocolate.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

This was one of those $2 nut-grinders that works by turning a crank. I was really surprised by how flimsy the cutting tines were, frankly. I have not yet chopped nuts in this thing and I suspect it wouldn't hold up under those for long either. When looking for nut grinders I saw a surprisingly large number of fancy coffee grinders offered for the purpose. I was cheap. :)

I find semi-sweet baker's and unsweetened are brittle enough to cut. Apparently adding sugar makes it more ductile!

I melt chocolate in the microwave (hey, if it's good enough for Alice Medrich), and chopping it up definitely helps that step go more smoothly. Zap on medium for 30sec, stir a while, zap for 30 sec, etc.

Re: Chopping chocolate.

[allanh.livejournal.com]

Microwaving chocolate is fine, if you're watching it very closely. I tend to take a slightly more scattershot approach. If I'm cooking something involving melting chocolate, I'm usually doing several things at once ... so nuking chocolate usually results in burned chocolate. I personally find it easier to dump chocolate into a double-boiler, where it won't (easily) scorch if I forget about it for 10 minutes. ;)

Cooking For Klutzes. That's me.

Re: Chopping chocolate.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm willing to do it in short bursts. I like the fact that microwaves, unlike most conventional ovens, QUIT COOKING after a specified time. :-)

Cooking For Klutzes. That's me.

You and me, man. That nut grinder was a *mess*.