Deep, rich, moist, fudgy, ooey gooey brownies

Deep, rich, moist, fudgy, ooey gooey brownies

Admit it. You want one. With a tall glass of milk. 

And then, you want another. Just because one wasn't enough. 

Go ahead, indulge. You have my permission. I promise.

But you better schedule in that run because honey, as lovely and decadent as these are - you will need to burn them off. I cannot lie and say that they are calorie free :) They are delightful. 

ok - have another, but don't say I didn't warn you!

One of the ingredients listed is "Black Onyx Cocoa Powder". I totally stumbled on this beautiful item several months ago. It's sold in a specialty spice shop here in the Denver area and heavenly. Savory Spice Shop is locally owned, and now franchised. You can order the cocoa powder on line. It is {worth. every. penny.} 

Deep Dark Chocolate Fudgey brownies

1 1/2 sticks of butter, melted 

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar 

3/4 cup All purpose Flour 

1/2 cup Dark cocoa powder 

1/4 cup Black Onyx Cocoa Powder*

3 eggs
1/2 cup Dark chocolate chips - I like Giardelli myself 

Now listen to me. I'm going to share a few good secrets with you here. Follow all of the instructions if you want these to come out of the pan the way mine did. This is the most important instruction you'll find on this page. FOLLOW the instructions!

Preheat your oven to 350. Especially at high altitude, you do not want your baked goods warming up with your oven. 

First, line a 9x9 pan with foil. Then liberally spray the foil with baking spray. I'm a huge fan of Prep. I could get it in my bakery supply store back home in Buffalo. Haven't found it here in Colorado yet. However, my very large can has lasted almost a year already so it goes a very long way.

Even though these brownies have a ton of butter, the pan still needs to be liberally sprayed. Maybe it's the Black Onyx cocoa powder, or the sugar, but it can be really sticky. 

You can also use pan grease which I have talked about on my blog in this Carrot Cake post from way back in November 2012.  It's a very easy recipe and lasts a long time. Refrigerate it though ok?

ok next, melt your butter. Personally, I'm a fan of using a pot on the stove, just because of the amount of butter. I don't like getting it all over the microwave when some of it is super melted, and some isn't. One step, into the pan, and viola you've got melted butter. Next, add the sugar to the melted butter. 

In your stand mixer, add the flour, and the cocoa powder, and the chocolate chips. Don't be a cheapskate and go with cheap chocolate chips. If you're going to indulge in these, make them right. That's how I feel about that!

Add the eggs one at a time, beating each into the flour cocoa mixture. Once all the eggs are incorporated, you can start to add the butter / sugar mixture. Do this in batches, giving it some time to incorporate. 

Now you are ready. Pour the very thick batter into the prepared, foil lined pan. Bake at 350 for about 25 minutes. They might be a little soft in the center, and you can try baking an additional 2-5 minutes depending on how you like the consistency of your brownies. Personally, I like mine gooey and fudgey. 

Please let these cool completely. Like, go watch a movie or do laundry or something. Unless you want "dump cake" brownies, do not mess with them until they are cooled completely. I know there's nothing better than warm chocolate and milk, or vanilla icecream - but seriously this will frustrate you if you pull them out of the pan too early. 

Enjoy and let me know how they turn out for you! :) 

Just what have you been up to?!?!?

Me? Just about everything! We'll I guess moving to a new state will do that to you. Don't get me wrong, it's been great, but there is so much to see and do that it's hard to convince myself to stay inside and play on the computer. 

Below are a few of the grand adventures we've enjoyed! 

Here, my son and I are headed up to Boulder for the day. We visited the Celestial Seasonings Tea plant and then walked around the 6th st mall. Very cool! 

I bought a new car. My freestyle had 129k miles on it and was tired. Besides, after $1400 in repairs with no solution, and the dealer wanting another $3200 to 'possibly' fix the problem, it seemed time. So here she is, my midnight blue, 2014 Chevy cruze. May she run forever. Or at least till I'm done paying for her!

I made applesauce. 10 pints of it actually. Because we won't eat the store bought kind. EVER. 

I'll let you in on a little secret - the best applesauce has a bit of Vanilla and brown sugar tossed in for sweetness. Go ahead, try it - you'll love it! 

I found a NY style pizza joint I can sink my teeth into. Yum and thank you Lord for the greasy cheese?

{THIS} is pizza. That's all folks... That is all.

I've been baking my butt off. I've mastered the fine art of cupcake baking and am working on bread. It's getting there but these were the bomb. One step closer to opening my bakery some day!

It was blessedly cold here this particular morning - and yes, that says minus 9 degrees. I can hear what you're thinking, and I concur. My thoughts exactly! (Actually now, they just finished a blizzard back home with sustained winds of 45mph and freezing cold temps - like neg 20 or colder!) I'll take Colorado anyday now that I'm ed U macated! LOL

And, since I didn't really get to enjoy Christmas last year in light of the big cross country move, I've celebrated this year by putting up (2) Christmas trees. As of this post (Jan 8th) They are STILL up. I guess it's time to start taking them down now... the neighbors might start talking! LOL

I don't know if I'll get used to decorating my tree with the windows open though! It was warm that day for SURE!

This was cool actually, though kind of in a bummed out way. I was in Hobby Lobby recently, and bumped into this plate. Do you know the artist? Her name is Jill Ankrom. LOVE her folksy snowmen! I have a whole slew of her stuff from back in Buffalo that was carried only by one store there. I've been looking for complimentary pieces ever since. I found this one little lonely only at Hobby Lobby - they had no others! I was bummed that I could only get one, but THRILLED that it has cupcakes on it. Bittersweet I guess...lol



Well other than work, and church, baking and crocheting, not much else has been going on in our world. What's been up with you?

~ Kisha

Fried dough and cheddar beer sauce :)

Hey all!

Here's a super quick post from my iPad.

My adventures in Colorado have kept me quite busy but I'm still enjoying my kitchen and crochet. I've mastered the art of fine Artisan Bread and have been experimenting with lots of different flavors, like a White Chocolate Cranberry Almond, and everyone's favorite, Garlic Cheddar. I found the recipe here  at Simply So Good, and couldn't believe how easy it is to follow. Seriously, the bread is {FOOL} Proof! If you follow the instructions, it would be impossible to mess this up. Heck, at one point I realized I was cutting the recipe in half, but continued adding the full amount of water (? uh.....no explanation there) and the bread was STILL amazing!

If you don't have 12-18 hrs to let something rise, just add a little more yeast. Doubling the yeast rises the bread in about half the time - and here in the High Altitude, everything rises much more quickly anyway.
If I am in a hurry - I can usually start the baking process after 4 hrs rise time.

I don't own an enamel covered cast iron dutch oven, however my regular ones do the job just fine. The two smaller loaves were the recipe cut in half, the larger loaf is one regular recipe. We are a small family though, so we don't need too much bread. I bake it twice a week, and often make extra to give away. The loaves cost me anywhere from 75 cents to $1.00 so they are totally worth the time and effort.

Got any flavor ideas to share with me?

You can follow my Bread Recipe Board here . I seriously have over 200 pins just for bread recipes alone. Tortillas, Indian Flaan, Artisan, white bread, whole wheat bread, rolls, croissants, garlic cheesy bread,  you name it, I've collected it. 

Last night my son reminded me of a yummy appetizer we had at Old Chicago a few months back. It was a fried dough with cheddar beer dipping sauce. We decided to try and recreate it at home - and so off to Pinterest I went. (and the liquor store, who knew there were so many kinds??)

I found a couple dough recipes but only one cheddar beer sauce so we chose a Pizza dough and gathered the ingredients for the sauce.

We LOVED the dough recipe. Seriously, I didn't have any honey so I used raw sugar as a replacement and it was amazing! Amazing... deep fried and YUMMM. The sauce we felt was lacking something. It was good, but maybe we chose the wrong beer, didn't add enough Worcestershire sauce, or maybe we did something wrong with the cheese. Either way we're sure it's NOT the original recipe's fault - but we are definitely going to use it as a guide and tweak it to our tastes  in the future. I'd say start with this one and go from there.

Anyway - you can find these recipes and many more by following me on Pinterest at sunflowergal74 :) 

Thanks to these websites for the yummy recipes, and for sharing your heart and food on the net for the rest of us to find!

www.simplysogood.com

www.thekitchn.com

http://www.theartofdoingstuff.com

Happy New Year!!! 

~Kisha