This Monster Brownie Taught Me a Lesson
A super-simple brownie recipe taught me a lesson in humility. Because how many times have I written that you should read the recipe carefully beforehand and weigh and measure everything properly? What I learned from this brownie: I can’t bake. Well, I’m very good at wasting half a kilo of chocolate.
A friend gave me a recipe for a brownie with a beautiful cheesecake swirl, and it sounded amazing. I gathered all the ingredients, took the brownie pan out of the cupboard and got to work. The recipe wasn’t complicated, and the accompanying image was breathtakingly beautiful.
When is the moment you start doubting a recipe—or yourself? Once I had weighed everything, it did strike me: a lot of chocolate. And six eggs? Quite a lot too. Heavy. Did I check the recipe again at that point? No way, I bravely carried on.
Batter to the brim
Music on, happily melting, whisking and mixing: I’m happy when I bake. That happiness quickly fades when my bake turns out to be a baking disaster, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I poured the brownie batter into the pan and made the pretty swirls on top. Hey, that batter came almost all the way to the rim of the brownie pan! And I had quite a lot of the swirl mixture left over! Well, slide it into the oven and we’ll see what happens.
An extra fifteen minutes, and another
And that brownie just kept baking. And not becoming done. Not after half an hour. Not after forty-five minutes. Not even after an hour. Unfortunately, my mood plummeted. How could something like this go wrong? I took another look at the recipe. No, I hadn’t skipped any steps, I hadn’t forgotten any ingredients and the oven temperature was exactly right too. Another fifteen minutes, then.
You mean that small pan?
Friend A. called, the only baking princess in our group of friends. I grumbled about the brownie still simmering in the oven like volcanic mud. ‘And that brownie pan I got from you was full to the brim!’ I exclaimed in amazement. ‘That small brownie pan,’ she said. ‘The 18-by-18 pan, you mean.’ I had to admit it. And she had to laugh. Because I should have used a brownie pan at least twice as large, so with this recipe I could have baked brownies for the entire street.
As thick as Van Dale
Arrggghhhh! One look in the oven told me there was nothing left to change. So this brownie was much too thick. Dry on the outside and soaking wet inside, impossible to cut into nice squares; the thing was as thick as Van Dale!
So I’ll repeat myself: check your entire recipe.
Including the size of your baking pan, for example.
Read also:
- Tips & tricks for the most delicious brownies
- Why you shouldn’t bake meatballs in an egg carton (and how to do it instead)
- These cakes are complete baking disasters
