ON THE FIRST DAY OF BLOGMAS I YELLED ABOUT BROWNIES...

... AND THEN I STOPPED MY YELLING.

Okay, so before I start talking about brownies, let me go through my brainwave that I just had. So I've had a couple of glasses of (oldish) wine, which will of course drop inhibitions and all that. I went down to use the little boys' STRONG AND BURLY AND VIRILE MEEEEEEN'S room, and realized that I have some pretty good wine autopilot. Which led to me making the mental typo of autopilate, which led to what would happen if there were a Transformer's recreation of the Bible. AUTO PONTIUS PILATE DUDES.

Aherm. On to loftier subjects.

Namely, brownies.

THE DA BROWNIE CODE

Here's what you'll need to recreate (which I don't necessarily recommend- more on that in a bit) my brownies.

225 g butter
170 g cocoa powder
400 g white sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
125 g flour

Which is much shorter than my usual list of business, am I right? Of course I am. I'M THE AUTHOR. WHAT I SAY GOES, AND NO AMOUNT OF FANFIC CAN CHANGE THAT FACT. Unless I'm Rob Liefeld, in which case Peter David can totally make Shatterstar gay and WOW was that a wacky tangent, and BACK TO THE SHOW.

I MELT IT GOOD/JUST LIKE I KNEW THAT I WOULD NOW

First off, you're going to melt all that butter over a low heat. You want to keep it low, because you don't want to have the butter oxidize and have some butyric acid or any of that business. Besides, you know how it goes when you overheat butter. Not well, that's how. Anyway, once you've got it melted, add in your cocoa powder. You'll want to stir it in and take it off the heat QUICKLY. Otherwise you end up with burny chocolate, and nobody likes that.

Around now, you should have a nice brown and bitter mixture. Brownies, not being bitter, need something else in them. If you said babies, shame on you (but seriously, meet me out back in a little bit because I may have um a something that needs babies). If you said sugar, congrats! You read the ingredients and then got sassed by a blog writer. Hooray for Internet anonymity. You're going to take your sugar and stir it into the chocolate. This will leave you with a brown mix that, strangely enough, tastes like brownie mix, and is extremely grainy.

Around now, I greased a receptacle. You can do it before, or later. It's really whatever; I just had time around now. You may also want to heat your oven to T5, which is around 150 C or 300 F. Of course, you know me- bake to whatever temperature gets the job done without burnage. One day, maybe I'll compress that into a legit adage, but NOT TONIGHT. BLOGMAS MUST GO ON.

Anyhoo, beat in and stir 2 eggs, one at a time. This would be where I messed up, but more on that later.

Next, combine your salt and flour and add that into the mix. Finally, add your vanilla and taste it. If it doesn't taste right, add some more sugar or salt until it tastes right. If you don't know what right tastes like, I can't help you, but maybe someone out there can. May God have mercy on your poor, poor, brownieless soul.

Man this entry has gotten grim. But there are brownies, which make everything better, right? Right.

Anyhoo, spread that business into a cake pan and cook for about 30 minutes, or more importantly, until a toothpick/knife/whatever comes out clean from the center. Let it cool in the pan.

Somehow I want to say something about a Reeve's wife and some guy named Absalon...

Now then, as for how I screwed up. Well, 2 eggs... probably isn't enough. The recipe I was using as a blueprint had a lot of comments regarding how there were too many eggs, resulting in a very cakelike result. I like my brownies like my fudge- fudgelike. As a result, I dropped the eggs from the recipe's 5 and the comments' 3 or 4 down to 2. This meant that my brownies, while delicious (despite Bev thinking they were too sugary- my friends thought they were great), were somewhat bricklike. This is something I should have anticipated given the granular character of the batter, but I have learned. So boom. Add another egg. See what happens.

Delicious, but basically a brick.

Yeah, there wasn't too much to have diverse subject headings. It's a quick enough recipe, and it gives you brownies, man.

And thus endeth the first day of Blogmas. Or the first post, rather. Tomorrow, maybe I'll catch up with the strawberry coffee cake! Or maybe I'll keep the suspense alive.