Brownie Blues

I was craving brownies. I'm the kind of person who can screw up a brownie mix, so you can imagine the challenge of trying to make brownies from scratch. But a woman on a moms' message board claimed that it was an easy task.

I madly searched the pantry, and the only substance of chocolate origin that I could find was a tin of Jacques Torres hot chocolate mix that had expired in June. It consisted of chocolate nibs, sugar, vanilla and cornstarch - I figured I would try it out.

Googling, I saw that many people were fans of the Ghirardelli recipe for Classic Chocolate Brownies, so I decided to use that as the basis for my experiment, even though I had no baking chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate chips. Since the hot chocolate mix already included vanilla and some sugar, I didn't add any vanilla and added half the sugar. I thought this seemed reasonable. I also omitted the salt since some of my butter was salted (I had three-quarters of a stick of unsalted butter and a quarter of a stick of salted).

I melted the butter with 1/2 cup of nibs. Then I added two eggs. This is where I believe things started to go awry, as I don't think I waited for the mixture to cool before adding the eggs. One of my problems with cooking is that I am too impatient to go through all of the necessary steps. So instead of sifting all the dry ingredients together and then adding them to the wet, I just put each one in separately. Unfortunately, this meant that the baking powder was probably not distributed evenly.

There was definitely something wrong with the batter. I remember from my years of Duncan Hines that the batter is supposed to be creamy; mine was almost leaden in comparison; I hesitate to use this analogy, but it almost looked like a small turd. I wondered if I had any milk. Only half a container of half-and-half. What the hell. I threw it in. At least now I could stir the batter and lick it off the spoon.

I decided to get creative and chopped some walnuts, then threw them into the batter. This was the only good idea I had.

The result was less than appealing. The surface had a granular quality, probably the result of inadequately mixed sugar. And the brownies weren't chocolatey enough; this could be because of the ill-advised addition of half-and-half. They were too cakey yet not risen enough, if this makes any sense. I remembered those Duncan Hines brownies - so chewy, irresistibly fudgy and moist, yet slightly cracked on top - and tried to imagine their flavor, letting the memory erase the present taste.