The Bubbling Brownie Incident

Ok, so there's a reason I don't cook much.  This may be the reason.  Here's the sad story.  *sigh...*

In 2007 I got this recipe from someone.  I forget who, ok?  So, I ask my Hunnibunni to print it from his office for me.  Being the good dear sweet Hunnibunn that he is, he does so.  Then puts it in his car to bring home to me.  And forgets about it.  Because I don't hardly cook stuff like that, I forgot, too.

Fast forward to circa 2011.  B is getting a new car so he is cleaning out the stuff from the old one.  He finds the now 4 year old recipe and brings it to me.  Ok, it still looks good.  Chocolate, dried cherries, pecans and more chocolate.  Butter...yuck...but I'll suffer through that.  It's only once every 4 years after all.  If I didn't like butter before... I hate it now.  :(

So, I decide I'll make it today.  I follow the directions and think, jeez, that's an awful lot of butter.  But, for me, 1/2 teaspoon is too much butter.  So, I make the recipe.  A little tip:  ALWAYS listen to your instincts!  :(

A small aside here.  Do you guys know that it is physically impossible to chop dried cherries with a knife? So, I spend 20 minutes cutting them up with a scissors.  Then I make the mistake of IM-ing my Mensa sister who tells me, that's what food choppers are for.  She says...just lightly coat the cherries with the flour to be used in the recipe and put them in the food chopper.  WHO thinks of these things?  *sigh....*  I won't even BEGIN to tell you about the mess my scissors was in.

Ok, back to the recipe.  They thing says to MELT the butter with the squares of chocolate.  Ok, I know what MELT means.  It doesn't mean SOFTEN, it means turn into liquid, right?  So, I melt the sucker.  In a pan.  With the chocolate squares.  Now I have a butter and melted chocolate mess. Well, what do I know?  Usually recipes just have you cream butter and sugar, right?  I follow the directions.  Silly me.

Then I mix in all the goodies and have this really stiff batter.  I think, hmmm, I wonder if this is going to be really dry?  Silly me.

I set it into my oven and toddle off to clean up.  Yum, good smells.  I decide I will chat with my sister whom I haven't talked with much lately but first, I will look at my brownies.

Holy shit.  They are BUBBLING!  They look like something out of Harry Potter's Dark Side classes.  Yikes.  WHY are they bubbling?  Mensa sis doesn't know.

So, after the 35 minutes, I go to take them out of the oven.  The recipe says, "Do not overcook".  I open the oven door and the nasty mess is burbling away.  This can't be right.  So, I leave them in another 10 minutes then decide, I will just have to eat them with a straw or use them for pasta sauce or some grim thing. We're talking Belgian chocolate here!  And pecans!  I can't just throw them away.  So, I take them out and put them on top of the stove.  Later on I go to look and they actually look somewhat solid.  So I tear off a couple miles of paper towels and blot off about 2/3 cup of slimy butter.  Hmmm, they re actually solid under the butter mess.  So, I blot some more then decide I can turn the pan upside down and pull the solidified mass out.  I lay down another mile of paper towels and do so.  PLOP!  The entire mess flops onto my towels.  I break off a corner.  Crap.  It is...OVERCOOKED!

Someone tell me just HOW you overcook something that is bubbling? I have NO idea.  But, sure enough, the edges are not burned but crunchy.  And coated with slime.

Ok, I get even more paper towels.  And decide to try it.  Hmm, other than the buttery mess it tastes pretty good!  I think I'll put them into my freezer where they will turn into concrete.  Then maybe I can scrape the rest of the butter off.  Bleeech.  Or maybe I can run them through the dishwasher?  :D

There has just GOT to be a way to make brownies without butter!  Enough to put a girl off her feed for years.  :D