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

[jupiter29.livejournal.com]

You definitely need to do something about that oven! I feel your pain. When I was growing up, we had a really old oven that was fairly consistent temperature-wise but had long since had all the temperature markings rubbed off. It just had a little line on the dial that pointed down when it was off, but it had nothing to point to. For years, all the cooking directions I learned from my mom would include lines like "Put it in at 2 o'clock for 60 minutes." I was the only one that understood that 2 o'clock was a temperature setting. :)

Of course, this also explains why I can't cook. ;) So I recommend a good little thermometer to hang in your oven.