Brownie Challenge

I am about to share a secret. A family secret. Actually, two secrets. The delicious, chocolaty secrets of brownies.

I was rifling through my loose-leaf folder full of recipes this morning, and I came upon two brownie recipes. One was in the well-known, curly handwriting of my Grandmother (my father’s mother), and one was in the neat, practical, all uppercase handwriting of my mother. So I decided to do a little Pepsi Challenge with the recipes.

Brownies are super easy to make from scratch. It doesn’t matter what recipe you are using—they are just so simple. And delicious. Oh so delicious. So follow my progress through the following two brownie recipes, and hopefully you will be inspired to make your own batch!

Grandmother’s Brownies:

Grandmother’s version is a classic. She suggests that you add pecans to your brownies, but I don’t do that because I don’t like anything to interfere with the chocolate. Nuts just take up space. But kind of like pancakes, you can add anything you like to brownies. Gummy worms would be good. Or oreos. Man, I should have tried that. Anyway, throw in whatever else you want to add texture or flavor to your brownies. That’s the fun part!

‘You want to start with butter, eggs, sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, and vanilla. Be sure that you are using baking powder, not baking soda. They are very different. I don’t remember exactly how they are different, but using one when you should be using the other can be disastrous. The baking powder, in case you don’t already know, is in that small, white canister. This is the main brand, and I know for a fact it is available at Walmart. Also, get the cocoa that is in the baking aisle. This is not the same as hot cocoa powder. And it does not taste at all as good if you try to eat it right out of the container. I learned that the hard way when I was about ten.

So you have your ingredients. Start off by beating the eggs until they are a nice, smooth yellow.

Then add your dry ingredients. This includes the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. I like to add the cocoa last because it sticks to itself and makes these neat little bumps.

Next, melt your butter. Put it in a microwave safe bowl and put it in the microwave for 30 seconds at a time until it is fully melted. It usually takes me about a minute and a half. You can’t do it all at once, though, or the butter will explode and you will be very sad indeed.

When you have melted the butter, pour it into your gloopy mixture. It will look quite disgusting.

Then add the vanilla. Then stir. Stir with all your might. The mixture will be extremely sticky and hard to stir. This is because brownies have a unique batter. They aren’t like cake, but they aren’t like cookies either. So you don’t want your brownie mixture to be as runny as cake batter, but you also don’t want it to be quite as firm as cookie dough. It should be sticky, stiff, and difficult to stir, but loose enough that you can still pour/spread it into the awaiting baking dish.

On that note, get a baking dish. I prefer the glass ones for brownies. This is unusual for me, because generally if I can use ultra-non-stick in any situation I will. But for brownies, glass just seems to work better. So grab a glass baking dish, like the one you use for enchiladas, lasagna, casserole, all those kinds of things. Then spray the heck out of it with PAM. I say PAM because I doubt other non-stick cooking sprays’ abilities to actually keep things from sticking.

Once you have done that, “pour” (as best you can) your brownie mix/dough/batter/ish into the glass baking dish. Spread it around with a rubber spatula (the kind you stir with, not the kind your flip pancakes with) and get it as even as you can. As stated before, the mixture is quite thick and stiff, so this can be difficult. But it will be so worth it when the brownies are done baking. Stick that sucker in the oven for about 25 minutes and then try to wait for it to cool before you grab a gallon of milk and eat it all.

Now, if you are doing the Pepsi Challenge like I am, prepare for the second round.

Mom’s Brownies:

As you can see, this recipe has slightly fewer ingredients. This wins it a lot of points with me, because I hate having to gather up my whole kitchen just to make one dish. So for me, it is already ahead by virtue of needing less stuff. But we should wait to taste them both before we make any final judgments.

Start this recipe with eggs, flour, vanilla, sugar, butter, and cocoa.

Begin by mixing the sugar and cocoa together and throwing them in the bowl.

Then melt the butter. Don’t forget—only 30 seconds at a time! Pour it into the cocoa/sugar mixture. What you will get is this beautiful, dark brown, grainy, delectable-looking mixture that you might want to stop and eat right away. Because after all, you don’t need much more in life than butter, sugar, and chocolate. Anyway.

Ruin this mixture by adding the eggs one at a time and mixing them in. You won’t want to eat it as bad this time because it will start looking kind of soupy. That’s okay, it’s probably for the best.

Add the teaspoon of vanilla. In case you didn’t know, when reading a recipe, a capital T means tablespoon, and a lowercase t means teaspoon. This could save you someday.

When you have done that, stir it all together until it is beautiful and creamy. It will look delicious again at this point, and if you want to eat it (and risk salmonella from the raw eggs) go for it! But if you have family members clamoring at you for fully-cooked brownies, it might be better to forge ahead.

Add the flour. This will take some time to mix in, and if you are anything like me, you will definitely end up with flower on you before the work is done. The mix will start becoming more stiff at this point, and this is what you want, because you are making brownies, not a chocolate cake. Hardcore people make brownies.

Same drill. When you finish incorporating the flour, pour the mix into a glass baking sheet. This recipe is slightly smaller than the former, so you want to go for a perfect square pan, rather than the rectangle.

Put it in the oven and bake it again for about 20-25 minutes. I obsessively check my dishes in the oven because a) I have burned a lot of things in the past by forgetting about them and b) I am extremely impatient once I have finished the preparation, and I just want to get them out and eat them. This goes for pretty much anything I cook.

The Results:

In the end, after a blind taste test that included two people (myself and N.), we determined that these two recipes are equally tasty. Much like N. likes Coke and I like Pepsi, N. like Grandmother’s brownies, and I preferred Mom’s. I will probably end up making Mom’s more often though, because the process is more intuitive, and of course, there are fewer ingredients.

So go forth and make delicious brownies! Find the recipes below:

Grandmother Knapp’s Brownies:

1 c. butter (melted)

4 eggs

2 c. sugar

1 c. flour

12T cocoa

2t baking powder

½ t salt

2 t vanilla

2 c. pecans (optional)

Beat eggs. Add sugar and sifted dry ingredients. Add butter, vanilla, and pecans. Mix well and bake in a shallow baking pan at 350 degrees, for 25 minutes, or until the top is firm.

Mama Knapp’s Brownies

1 c. sugar

2T cocoa

½ c. butter or margarine (melted)

2 eggs

¾ c. flour

1 t. vanilla

Mix sugar and cocoa in a bowl. Add melted butter and stir well. Add eggs, one at a time, and blend. Add flour and mix well, but do not over beat. Add vanilla. Pour into greased pan (8 1/2x8 1/2) and bake at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes.