It's Brownie Time And Happy Birthday, Maxine!!!

April 16 is MyDearFriendMaxine'sBirthday.
Every year I make her brownies;
however, these are not just any brownies.
These are MAGNIFICENT BROWNIES.


Thank you,
Kelly Jaggers of EvilShenanigans blogdom,
for the recipe.

Kelly's Brownies

(Prepared by Rosie)

3 ounces unsalted butter

2 oz. dark chocolate, at least 62%, chopped

14 oz. sugar

4 oz. sourwood honey (From Mr. Hawthorne's stash.)

3 oz. unsalted butter

3 large eggs

.75 oz. water

1 tsp espresso

1 tsp vanilla

5.25 oz. cake flour

1 oz. Dutch processed cocoa powder

1 tsp kosher salt

3 oz. chocolate chips

Heat oven to 350°.

Butter a 9" x 13" baking pan with butter.

Line with buttered parchment paper.

In a small bowl, combine butter and dark chocolate.

Microwave until completely melted.

Stir until smooth and set aside to cool slightly.

Combine sugar, honey, and second portion of butter.

Mix well.

Dissolve espresso in water.

Add that along with eggs and vanilla to sugar mixture.

Mix to combine.

Stir in melted chocolate mixture and mix well.

Be sure to scrape sides and bottom of bowl well

so mixture is completely combined.

Sift dry ingredients and add them to wet mixture.

Mix until just beginning to moisten, then add in the chips.

Mix until dry ingredients are incorporated

and there are no lumps.

Pour into prepared pan and bake for 30-40 minutes,

or until center is just set.

Let cool, then slice.

Chocolate Ganache

8 oz. dark chocolate

4 oz. heavy cream

Heat cream in small pan until it just reaches a simmer.

Turn off heat and add chocolate.

Let stand for a minute, then whisk until smooth.

Let cool to room temperature, then frost brownies.

 I used a combination of dark chocolates.

Batter is mixed.

Spread batter evenly with offset spatula.

Bake until center is just set.

Prepare the ganache.

I made ganache sandwiches out of the brownies this time.

Stick a toothpick through each "sandwich"

to keep top from sliding off.

Mr. Hawthorne suggested that next time,

I make ice cream sandwiches,

ganache the outside, and freeze.

Sounds like a plan.

Thank you, Kelly,

for most excellent brownies.

Supernatural Brownies.

Yep. I thought that would get your attention.
 First, I must give credit where credit's due:
Today's brownies are brought to you by Kelly, of Evil Shenanigans.
 Thursday is my dear friend Maxine's birthday
. Every year, I make her a batch of brownies and send them to her.
 Maxine loves her chocolate.
 Every year I make the same batch of brownies,
 from the recipe on the Nestle's box,
 to which I always add some Nestle's Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels
 over the top while it's still hot right out of the oven
 so they'll melt and you can spread them out evenly
. I wanted to make the brownies today
 and mail them tomorrow since the Postal Service
takes 2 overnights to go the 276 miles to Maxine's house.
 Before I started digging into my recipe box,
and yes, it is a box, to find the particular
color-coded notebook for all my Brownie recipes ........
 All right. I do have a recipe box.
 I do have different colored notebooks
 with somewhat sorted recipes in each notebook
. However, there here is no "coding" involved
. My notebooks would be divided like this:
 Christmas Baking Entrees
Vegetables
Soups
Breads
 Seafood
 Appetizers
 Salads
Dressings
 Sauces
Food Network Recipes
 Note, I said, "My notebooks would be divided like this."
But they aren't exactly.
I have piles of recipes paper-clipped together
in some sort of semi-organized chaos.
 I've been wanting to sit down and go through everything
 and properly file them but it's too overwhelming.
 I do have a plan.
 Really I do.
It just hasn't been implemented all the way through
 because I have so many other plans.
 I do what I can do.

But before I started baking my yearly batch of the same brownies,
I happened to browse through the latest posts on the blogs
 I like to read and stopped on Kelly's Evil Shenanigans.
  Ohhh. Look on my puter screen above.
 Holey Moley.
 There was her latest post about brownies.
 And beautiful luscious photographs.
 Of decadent brownies.
Richness.
 Excess.
Extreme Decadence.
 Maxine, Kelly's brownies had your name written all over them.
 I'm changing the recipe this year.

********Kelly of EvilShenanigans' Recipe*********
 My mise en place:
 3 oz butter
2 oz dark chocolate, at least 62%, chopped
 Sugar 14 oz
 4 oz golden syrup or honey
 3 oz butter
5 oz eggs (about three large)
 .75 oz water
 1 teaspoon instant espresso
 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
5.25 oz cake flour
1 oz dutch processed cocoa powder
1 teaspoon salt
 3 oz chocolate chips
 I tell you, you gotta love those foodies.
Especially the ones who go to culinary school
 and measure everything by weight.
Not to worry though.
 I asked for and got a digital scale for Christmas so I'm good to go.

My dark chocolate of choice was Cacao Ghirardelli Bittersweet Chips,
 which was pretty much the only chocolate I could find.
 I added 2 oz. of chocolate to 3 oz. of butter
and nuked until melted.

I poured the water onto my teaspoon of ground 8 o'clock Colombian Coffee to dissolve.

Kelly offers cane syrup or honey for this addition and she favors cane syrup.
 But I have no cane syrup.
 Gee, I don't think I could even find cane syrup down here.
 So I went with the honey, in this case,
 not the sourwood honey we covet,
which Mr. Hawthorne gets from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia,
but some Orange Blossom Honey he mail-ordered.

I combined:
3 ounces butter
14 oz. sugar
4 oz. honey

I added in the semi-dissolved ground coffee.

The 3 large eggs got added in next.
 Kelly  said 5 ounces of eggs, approximately 3 large eggs.
 Of course I weighed my 3 eggs.
 They were 5.4 ounces.
I threw caution to the wind and added the extra .4 ounces into my mix.

And I added a teaspoon plus of vanilla just because I love vanilla.

The melted chocolate and butter mixture was stirred into the batter.

Stir to mix completely.

And stir some more. You know I love my action shots.

Sift the cake flour, cocoa, and salt into the mix.

Lastly, add in the chocolate chips.

And pour into a prepared pan.
I sprayed a 9 x 13 pan with non-stick spray,
lined it with parchment paper, and sprayed again, per Kelly's instructions.

I smoothed the batter out evenly
and licked clean every spatula, bowl, and utensil that had any chocolate left on it.

And it's ready to go into a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.
 You would not believe what my house smelled like while this was cooking.

I let the cake cool in the pan, then inverted it onto my board.

Here are the ingredients for the icing,
which I also shamelessly stole from Kelly and slightly adjusted:
4 TB butter 1 cup+ confectioner's sugar
 1/4 cup cocoa powder
 3-4 TB milk vanilla

First I creamed the butter and cocoa powder.

Then added in the powdered sugar.

And the vanilla.

And poured in enough milk to ....

... make it look like this.

And I frosted my brownie cake.

And made little swirlies on top.

Now, just scroll on down and check out my brownie pictures.
 And try not to drool on your keyboard.

You can see the little chocolate chips in these pictures.

Kelly, a great big thank you to you.
These were absolutely divine.