Brownie Points

Hello, friends, and welcome back to Roughly 100 Cookies. I have a question for you to start off today’s (long-delayed) post.

When you think of a cookie, what comes to mind?

For me, the classic chocolate chip arises first — the perfect little round boi encapsulated in the emoji keyboard and a thousand other reference points of collective cookie memory. If pressed to list more, I might think of a snickerdoodle or a peanut butter cookie; if I got quite inventive, I’d move on to frosting-filled sandwich types. But, dear reader, does a brownie make the cut?

“My Favorite Brownies,” or, as I like to call them, “No They Aren’t.”

This book argues that it does, devoting, in fact, an entire chapter to brownie and blondie recipes. I find this a gross misclassification, on par with the insane belief some people hold that a hot dog is a sandwich. (It is NOT. It is a SEPARATE THING.) However, I do like brownies, and I’m on a mission here, so for the next few entries in my cookie blog, brownies will be the topic du jour.

I’ve made the first five recipes of Chapter Two since my last post, and I have a controversial-yet-brave take to present. Regular brownies? Not that good.

Above: Cakey Brownies. Below: Fudgy Brownies

I was shocked to slowly realize this over the last few weeks, because I’ve always thought of myself as a brownie fan. They’re big chocolate blocks! What’s not to like, right? But, in testing all these recipes, I’ve found that, the plainer the brownie, the more tepid my response. The first recipe of this chapter was My Favorite Brownie, and I found it just okay. Things improved slightly when we moved on to Fudgy Brownies (though they earned some demerits for requiring a whole half-dozen eggs for one batch), and they improved further still with Cakey Brownies, which, as you could guess, are a sort of hybrid between a traditional dense brownie and a slice of more aerated cake. By far my favorite, though, were Cream Cheese Brownies, which at last broke me out of the rut of plain chocolate on chocolate with a gob of cheesecake swirled in.

Cream Cheese Brownies

I never thought I’d say what I’m about to, but the problem with the first three was that they were just too chocolatey. They seem fine for a party where everyone has one square and moves on, but as a batch dessert to eat your way through gradually, these were too much. Cream Cheese Brownies finally gave me something different to work with, and, as with all diversity, it was a great thing.

I skipped Turtle Brownies and Rocky Road Brownies out of a general disdain for nuts, so next in line was Swirl Brownies, which brought me right back to Okayville. Now, I’ll admit this was partly my own doing. I underbaked this batch slightly, and I also chose the more boring option of the two the book presented (milk chocolate swirl instead of coconut). I generally don’t love coconut, but amid the chocolate burnout I’m suffering, I think it may have been the better brownie. As for the option I chose, let’s put it this way: I have dinner reservations tonight for the first time in sixteen months, and after trying these, even my triumphant return to restaurant dining won’t convince me to order dessert.

Looking better as batter than finished brownies: not a good sign

From here out, the recipes get a bit more crafty, so I look forward to emerging from my chocolate coma to try things that taste like literally anything else. Stay tuned to find out how long it takes me to miss chocolate again — and how well I fare once the recipes get more complicated than “toss some eggs and chocolate in a pan.”