Day 10: Walnut Brownies

Thursday was (another!) friend's birthday, but we weren't able to meet up until tomorrow. I asked him if he had any requested item for me to bake for him.

Can you guess what his request was?
Woah how did you know it was walnut brownies?!
You must be psychic or something!

My friend actually contributes to a blog himself. Actually, this entire past year, he had been asking me to guess write for it. Obviously, I never did, always oh-so-busy. He must be getting a kick out of this, especially as I'm posting every single day. Or maybe he's really frustrated with me. But he won't be after I give him these brownies. So it's all good.
But seriously. You should check out his comics blog. Wish Matt a happy birthday. Tell him Selene sent ya there. Or not. It's whatever. Just take a look at least.
(How many links can Selene make to Matt's blog? A ridiculous amount. Oh look, here's even another.)

Even though this is a classic recipe, I've never actually made homemade brownies before. I know, weird right? It's just that the boxed mixes are so convenient!

I found this recipe at epicurious, and after seeing all the rave reviews on it, decided to give it a whirl! Ya know how I always ask you to read online recipes, and always promise they're super short? Well this recipe is the shortest of them all, so no excuses. Hop to and read it so you can follow along!

Ingredients

Salt not pictured.

I only used 1.5 cups of sugar instead of the called for 2 cups. This produced a much less sweet brownie, akin to either semi-sweet chocolate or even dark chocolate. As a person who doesn't like oversweet dishes, I found this to be much tastier.

I also used more walnuts. I didn't actually measure, just used the rest of my bag. The walnuts are also optional (nut allergens: rejoice!). They definitely don't make the dish, though they definitely add to it (that is, if you like nuts).

The Process

To expedite the melting process, also cut the butter into smaller pieces.

You could also obviously use a double boiler for this as well, which would forgive you if you didn't constantly stir. My oven is still out of commission (read more about this in yesterday's post), so I was baking at my grandmother's, and decided the less pans I used, the better. Also, this was faster, if only because I didn't have to wait for the water to boil before beginning to melt the ingredients.

As you're at your grandmother's house, she'll willingly take some nice action shots of you, and also provide pleasant conversation while you mix and melt and make.

The next few steps are fairly obvious. However, you don't actually have to use an electric mixer; a whisk would work just fine, but would just require more elbow grease to make the eggs + sugar as light and fluffy as a seal pup. If you don't use an electric mixer, I'd suggest beating in the sugar in thirds.

If using a double boiler to melt the butter and chocolate, you can begin mixing the eggs and sugar while the water comes to a boil and also while they actually melt.

If you wish, you can mix in the walnuts rather than just sprinkle them on top. 

A note: somehow, the oven turned off while I was baking my brownies. So I have no idea how long I truly cooked my brownies,  and even then my temperatures would differ. Luckily, I could rely on my faithful friend Mr. Toothpick. Just keep in mind that the discrepancies in my baking time might have affected my texture.

This recipe doesn't actually give a cool down period, which gave me some issues.I didn't keep track of how long I let the brownie cool in the pan, but I'd say it was a good five minutes. Unfortunately, I was dumb and just place the on the stove top, rather than a wire rack or even a kitchen towel. Here's what resulted when I tried to invert the pan and get the brownies out:

lololololololol fail

Luckily, we cut the entire dish into smaller brownies, which made this screw up forgivable.

My suggestion would be to let the brownie cool for ten minutes on a wire rack or dish towel, before trying to get it out. If you really want a clean removal, line the bottom of your pan with parchment paper.

The Final Product

Some Notes:

There's probably 3 times as many brownies as shown in the final picture. Enough to fill a 13x9" pan!

Do notice how dense these brownies are. This might have to do with my baking time issues, but I don't think so.

To cut my brownies, I used a regular knife.

Also realize that these brownies won't cut perfectly. The nuts plus the moist and dense brownie prevent this.

This brownie actually breaks really easily. Also, though it doesn't necessarily crumble, as there aren't any hard crumbs, but there is definitely some soft debris. I don't know if this quite makes sense; you'd get it if you actually made the recipe.

The Final Verdict

Brownies aren't really my favorite dish, nor do I particularly like really dense and rich treats. But these brownies are still quite good. If you do like these type of traits, you will absolutely love this.

One of my favorite parts of this recipe was its simplicity. I appreciate the simple things. In case you hadn't figured from my blog name.

If you're someone who values presentation, you may want to stear clear of this recipe. There's really no way to nicely cut the entire thing into nice, symmetrical bars.

This is also not necessarily the cleanest of items, with it's liability to break.

However, if you only care about the flavor and richness rather than looks, you should definitely try this recipe!