Anyway, I have been making these brownies for Pesach every year since I got married,
so if I make roughly 3,4 or 5 trays of brownies each Pesach, and if I am doing my math correctly,
that would mean that I have made this brownie recipe between 30 and 40 times. And
each time, I faithfully follow the recipe and they come out great. Except for
this year, when I ran into some ingredient and kitchen issues, which is not entirely crazy when cooking in someone else's kitchen. Like me, today, in my mom's second kitchen. Well, you'll see.
Here is the Classic Brownie Recipe that has been in use for almost a decade:
2 cups chocolate chips
1 cup margarine
8 eggs
2 and 2/3 cups sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups cake meal
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Melt the chocolate chips and margarine in the microwave, stirring every thirty seconds until melted. Using a mixer, cream the melted chocolate and margarine and sugar until it's well mixed. Add the eggs and mix again. Add in the cake meal, mixing until fully mixed in. Pour into a 9x13
inch greased pan and bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until set in the center.
I was all set to make four batches of these guys this morning. Little T and I went to my parents' house, lugging a 5lb bag of sugar and 3 dozen eggs. I was going to dig into my mom's Pesach stash for the rest. We deposited everything in the downstairs and kosher for Pesach kitchen and got started. We measured out the 2 cups of chocolate chips and looked around. And then looked around some more before it dawned on me that there was no microwave here. Hmmm. I also didn't have a pot to melt the chocolate in on the stovetop. Oh, and there was no margarine. Once again, I was as prepared as a tipsy Girl Scout.
What to do? Before I could decide to just not bake the brownies and make something else instead, Improvisational Jen came to visit. A few minutes later, the brownie recipe was reworked using what we had on hand. It was gamble because messing with a Pesach recipe usually results in disaster, but happily, these came out so well that I made three more trays.
Now here is the new take on the old classic brownie recipe. Let's just call it the New-Old Brownie Recipe.
2 cups sugar
1 cup oil
7 eggs
1 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups cake meal
chocolate chips
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
In a large bowl, mix the sugar, oil and eggs until totally mixed together.
Then mix it some more because it took a nice long while for it to get itself
together. Add the cocoa powder, salt and cake meal and mix for a good three
minutes. Be prepared for the "dust" from the cake meal to fly everywhere. Add a
few handfuls of chocolate chips into the bowl and mix. Use your good judgement;
you can't really go wrong with extra chocolate chips.
Pour the batter into a greased 9x13 inch pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes or
until the center is set.
I admit to tasting this; how could I not when it was a total unknown? I tasted, I liked. But more important, Little T, my chocoholic, tasted it and asked for seconds. Phew.