brownie night at my house!

I had a bunch of baking chocolate and cocoa I wanted to use up, because letting them sit on the shelf all summer long doesn't do them any favors. I decided that brownies were the way to go.

To use up the cocoa I made Alton Brown's brownie recipe, which starts with beating the bejeezis out of 4 eggs, then adding both white and brown sugar, flour, salt, vanilla, and a whole lot of melted butter. They're good, but not quite as fudgey as I'd have liked. I used cake flour, and I think that might have had something to do with it.



The second batch I made was to use up the baking chocolate. I decided to do mint brownies, because both my husband and my mom really like mint and I figured that was a good way to get rid of them so that I wouldn't eat them...;) This recipe was basically the same in the brownie part, except it called for melted chocolate mixed into the beaten eggs, rather than cocoa...and it had less sugar by about half! The fun part was the layer of minty frosting (made from butter, powdered sugar, milk, and mint extract). The frosting was spread on the mostly-cooled brownies, then the pan was put in the fridge for an hour to firm up. The final layer was unsweetened chocolate melted with butter, left to cool a little, then spread across the top of the minty layer and allowed to set in the fridge. I really liked this recipe. The unsweetened chocolate on top helped cut the sweetness of the mint frosting, and the cake flour didn't seem to make these brownies as crumbly as the other ones.