I lurve brownies

Ah, brownies.  My first choice when it comes to plugging my sweet tooth.  Mmmmm...

I decided that I wanted to do a few food posts; I don't cook very often, so I suppose this is a way of proving that I do actually break out the measuring cups from time to time.  I also wanted to show off some of our "wanna-be farm" fresh eggs!  We have chickens and ducks that lay; we get a lot more duck than chicken eggs each day.  The duck eggs are fabulous; thick orange yolks and whites that could be used in place of super glue.  They are quite a bit larger than chicken eggs (I suppose they might be the size of Jumbo chicken eggs, or maybe just a hair larger than that) and are just a tad bit richer.  We feed them to the dogs once or twice a week.  They are excellent for their coats and skin, and they love them!  If you decide to do this with your dogs, please be sure to cook the eggs.  Raw eggs are not a good idea for dogs because an enzyme in them interferes with the absorbtion of a particular B vitamin.  Otherwise, it won't poison them or anything.  Many people do give raw eggs to their dogs, but most of the information I've found says not to.

Those are a couple of our chicken eggs.  Aren't they purdy?  This picture doesn't show it very well, but the egg on the left is actually a nice light olive green.

Anyhoo, back to the brownies.  I found this recipe on allrecipes.com; everyone said it was the best one and I tweaked it just a little.  Here are the ingredients I used (not showing the sugar or flour because, please, do you really need to see those?):

Mmmmm Mmmmm Better Brownies
Makes 1-16 brownies, depending on how much self control you have

1/2 cup melted butter
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp espresso powder

Get your oven heating to 350; grease a 9x9 pan (we don't have one, so I used an 8x8).

Mix the butter, sugar, and vanilla together.  Beat in the eggs.  (Note: always break your eggs one at at time into a seperate dish or bowl.  I use a liquid measuring cup.  This way if one of your eggs is yucky, you don't have to scrap your whole recipe and start over.)  Combine the rest of the ingredients in a seperate bowl and gradually stir into the egg mixture, until well blended.  Pour into your greased pan.

Lick spatula, mixing bowl, and mixer paddle clean; put brownies in the oven.  Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the brownie edges start to pull away from the pan.  I baked mine closer to 30 minutes since I was using a smaller pan, which makes the brownies a little thicker. 

Let cool on wire rack before cutting into squares.  Or burn yourself cutting one out of the pan if you can't wait.

Mine came out very rich and chocolately with a nice crisp edge, thin crunchy top and soft but not quite gooey center, but not very thick.  I think that is because my baking powder is old.  But, they were excellent just the same.  I could have eaten the whole pan with a gallon of milk!  But, sadly, that is why I also have a weight loss blog.  So, I just had one.  Ok, it was big, but it was just one!

TTFN.