Scratch Brownies

When it comes to baking or cooking for an event, I'll take baking any day. Maybe it's because I have a major sweet tooth, but I prefer it since in my earlier young adult days, stuff from the oven always came out better than from the stove top. Ask my hubby. I was making my Mint Brownies(check them out in my earlier post) and didn't have a brownie mix. What's a girl to do? Find a good brownie recipe.

This one comes from http://www.allrecipes.com/ and I believe it's the best from scratch batch that I've tried in the past year. The two things that you may not be able to find locally (or of good quality) is unsweetened cocoa powder and vanilla extract. Sub in what you can, and pray to the baking gods for the best! By the way, these are not for those of you on a diet out there as you will see from the first couple of ingredients.

Most Awesome Brownies
1/2 cup of butter (that's 1 stick :) )
1 cup of sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8X8 pan. In a large saucepan, melt the butter slowly. Remove from heat and stir in sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Beat in cocoa powder, flour, salt, and baking powder (I used a hand mixer for this, but you can mix by hand). Spread batter evenly in pan. Bake in preheated pan for 25 to 30 minutes. Check with a toothpick for doneness and be sure not to over bake. Remove from oven and cool.

If you are ever out of box mix, give these brownies a shot.