Dessert Diaries

Here it is - Big Granny's Brownies

Honestly it's just a good brownie mix with Big Granny's icing on top. I've tried brownies from scratch and the mixes turn out just as well or better with much less hassle. She uses this icing for cakes and other things too, but I associate it best with brownies.

Ingredients:

1 stick butter

2 cups sugar

4-5 tablespoons cocoa

1/4 cup milk

splash of vanilla

Add everything but vanilla to a heavy saucepan and put on medium heat. Allow everything to melt slowly and bring to a boil. Once a good rolling boil has been achieved, start counting and keep stirring. Yep, this is how Granny told me to do it. No candy thermometer, no hard ball, soft ball testing. Just count. Count your mississippi's until 2 minutes have passed. Take the pan off the heat and add vanilla. Keep stirring. And stirring. And stirring. I love making this because it really feels like I'm cooking something with all that stirring. It will take a while. Keep stirring. Sometimes I'll set the pan in a shallow bath of cold water in the sink to help things along. Once the chocolate starts to loose it's glossy look and you feel the spoon give a little resistance around the edges while stirring - it's time to pour. And you'd better be quick or you'll get ugly brownies (see picture below)

Now - sometimes I make this and I stir and stir and the pan gets completely cool but I'm just left with chocolate goo instead of icing. At this point you can pretend you meant it to turn out that way and drizzle the goo on your brownies like a fancy syrup or you can go back to the burner and try again. This bascially means that you didn't get the counting part right. So take the luke warm goo and bring it back up to boil. Repeat the counting and stirring and things should work out. I've had to convert goo many times and it almost always works out the second time around.

I made two pans of brownies for the Superbowl last night. The first pan are the "pretty" brownies that got poured first. By the time I made it to pan #2 I was too slow and got "ugly" brownies. Good news is they still taste the same.