Since You've Been Gone: Semi-Fail Brownies

 Brownie tops, courtesy of that infernal fake non-stick hussy of a pan.

Dear Readers,

As most of you know, the Resident Taste Tester has been out of town (to correct my previous post, he is approximately 4100km away), and he has taken the camera (well, I put it in his hands so he could send neat pictures of far away places). But! I am not to be disheartened from posting.

Now, these grainy, even more poorly lit than usual, and completely lacking in composition photos are only being shared with you because I like you. I like you in the way that I would go shopping with M back home and be shy about a sort of fugly (is anything only sort of fugly?) swimsuit but come out of the fitting room to show her anyway. Yes, I like you oven-peeping folk that much.

So anyway, I made brownies a couple days ago. I adapted this brownie recipe from allrecipes.com. I wanted to spice them up a bit and tried to create a brownie-molasses-cookie hybrid. I thought the mini muffin pan might do well. Not learning my lesson from last time (that this non-stick claim was a crock of poop), I pried the brownies from it and then promptly threw it away. This left me with a pile of brownie rubble rather than neat little two-bite dreams. And then I compulsively ate them to hide my baking shame and to ease a little watching-movies-by-myself loneliness.

Brownies
Adapted from allrecipes.com

Yields 18 two-bite brownies (made with itsy bitsy muffin tins)

 1 T  unsalted butter, melted
1/2 C  sugar
1  egg
1 T  molasses
1/2 tsp vanilla
3 T  cocoa
1/4 C  flour
1/8 tsp  salt
1/8 tsp  double-acting baking powder
1/4 tsp  cinnamon
1/4 tsp  ginger

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F (177C).
2. Grease and flour whatever pan you're going to bake in.
3. Whisk together the butter, sugar, egg, molasses, and vanilla.
4. Add the cocoa, flour, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, and ginger and beat until homogeneous.
5. Fill pan (2/3 full for muffin tins) and bake 15-20 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out dry with just a few crumbs clinging to it.
6. Cool 1-2 minutes in the pan before slicing/removing.
7. Enjoy!

 Brownie Reflections

Non-stick. Mhmm.

I think if I did this again, I would double the molasses, ginger, and cinnamon and cut the sugar in half. I would also just plop the runny batter on a greased and floured tray to make cookies. The brilliant thing about these brownies were the tops that had runneth over the tins. They came away with an easy twist (leaving the rest of the brownie to be scraped out, ugh), slightly crispy on the outside, brownie soft on the inside.

I am glad to have that lie-of-a-non-stick-pan out of my life. No matter how carefully you greased and floured the thing beforehand, it would coax unsuspecting baked goodies to become one with its matte metal surface. As with all useless and frustrating things in life, you eventually tire of them and they end up in the trash (I'm all for reduce, reuse, recycle, but man that thing was evil).

Look forward to a few more fugly bikini style photo sharing posts.