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No. Box. Brownies. EVER!!
I feel about brownies from a mix much the same as Joan Crawford, at least as rendered by Faye Dunaway, did about cheap closet accessories. I loathe them. Ok, OK, I hear you. You’re scratching your head, your brow is furrowed and you say to yourself in a perplexed way, “But I thought she said use a mix for pie crust.”
“It’s HARDER to bake from scratch,” you whine. “What’s up with this crazy bitch anyway? Why can’t she make up her mind?”
It’s all about cost/benefit. Pie crust is hard to make and can easily go wrong, way way wrong. I have found one mix that almost never fails and tastes pretty good, so I use it.
Brownies, however, are a different story. Why? It is ridiculously easy to make de-licious, fudgy brownies if you use my recipe. They always, ALWAYS come out right and they taste infinitely better than that crap in a box, and I don’t care if it’s made with fancy Italian chocolate. Still gross.
I found this recipe in an issue of Ladies Home Journal at Grammie Sue’s house about 25 years ago, and it has never failed me. By happy coincidence, it comes from the queen of all movie stars, and my all time favorite actress, Katharine Hepburn. The magazine featured an interview with her, which explains why I picked it up in the first place, as I was really more of a Spy magazine girl at the time. Oh shit, who am I kidding, on the odd occasions I could get my ass off a barstool, all I ever bothered to read was National Lampoon at that point in my life. Spy was too highbrow. Anyways, what the LHJ interview lacked in dirt on Kate and Spenc-ah, it more than made up for with this fabulous recipe. Hundreds of satisfied dinner guests and half a dozen voluntary sugar comas can’t be wrong!
Hepburn’s Brownies
Melt over low heat:
- 1 stick unsalted butter (1/2 cup)
- 2 squares (or 2 ounces) unsweetened chocolate, best you can find, though Baker’s brand is fine
In a bowl, whisk:
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup sugar
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract (pure, not that nasty imitation stuff – might as well use a mix if that’s all you’ve got. For variety, you can substitute pure almond extract for the vanilla. Party on!)
Once the butter and chocolate are melted, slowly add the mixture to the egg mixture, whisking all the time. DO NOT just dump the hot chocolate in all at once, no matter how much you want to. You could end up with scrambled eggs.
After that’s mixed, add:
- ¼ cup flour (no more!)
- ¼ tsp salt (do not omit this! Sweetness unbalanced by salt is not worth the calories.)
Stir it until it’s blended, then dump the batter into a greased and floured, square baking dish (8” x 8” or so). Scrape the leftover batter into the pan or into your mouth. At this point do I have to tell you which I’d choose?
Bake at 325 degrees for 30-40 minutes depending on your oven. Mine runs a little hot and I dislike overcooked baked goods, so I do about 30 minutes.
And listen, Christina, if you invite me over for dessert and serve these brownies with walnuts, I can’t be held responsible for my actions. I have been known travel with an axe from time to time. It won’t be you I’m mad at, of course, it’ll be the nuts.
Case Discounts: The slattern’s secret to avoiding emergencies and cutting costs
Patsy and Eddie, Courtesy bbc.co.uk
If someone offered you ten to fifteen percent off the price of that bottle of wine you’re currently swilling of course you’d accept. Well, just in case you didn’t know, any decent wine shop will give you at least ten percent off if you buy by the case. Sometimes you can get fifteen percent off for unmixed cases, or if like me, you shop at the same store so often you could probably get your mail there.
Cheers, Sweetie!
In praise of the bread machine
courtesy breadinfo.com
Let me tell you bread machines were the hottest things since, well sliced bread, in the early 90s if memory serves. These days you don’t hear much about them, really, what with the ascendance of convection ovens (two sets of cooking times, are you kidding?), restaurant grade appliances (in the home?! I don’t need the unreasonable expectations created by having six burners), and the George Foreman grill (get real, I live in New York City. There’s barely room for the coffee maker in my kitchen, and that’s critical). But you never hear about the lowly bread machine anymore. It’s fallen out of fashion, and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because we’re in a period where labor-intensive is more chic than labor-saving, and that’s just messed up.
Well let me tell you, fashionable or not, the bread maker is absolutely the greatest kitchen appliance. Evah. Imagine waking up to the smell of baking bread in the morning – takes the sting out of being occupied, don’t it? But the real benefit is that you do almost nothing, no kneading, no resting, no rising, no agonizing. Just dump the ingredients in, press the button and walk away. Four or five hours later, voila. Could not be easier.
Now, I have read the food porn that touts the pleasures of bread making – how Zen the experience of being up to your elbows in dough can be, how satisfying it is to serve a handmade loaf to family and friends. Blah blah blah.
Horseshit.
It’s a lot of time and effort, and it never comes out right. The machine is foolproof and slattern friendly, and the product is indistinguishable from “real” homemade bread, of which I’ve eaten a fair amount in my life – one look at my ass proves it. I can’t tell the difference, and I’ll bet Grammie Sue couldn’t either. And by the way, if she’d had a bread machine in the 1950s, things might have been very different in her house.
So dig that bad boy out of the closet and crank it up. Don’t worry if you’ve lost the recipe book. There must be a million recipes on the web, but all you need is one. You can thank me later.
Salad: A bottom-up approach
Again, I must tip my hat to the one and only Madame Hodgkins for this invaluable tip:
When making salad, always mix up the dressing in the bottom of the same salad bowl you’re going to serve it from, then throw in the tomatoes and any other chopped vegetables. I like a little avocado and red onion, but if you feel the need to bung some carrots or cukes in there, have at it. The last thing to go in is the lettuce. (And really, does anyone use anything but the pre-washed, bagged stuff anymore? I know you’re supposed to wash it and I always intend to, but…Anyways, you really should wash it before you eat it. Let’s leave it at that. But I digress.) The only things you really should hold off adding until the moment of service are crumbled cheese and nuts.
So once you’ve got the dressing made (unless of course you’re drawing from the big stash in your fridge) and everything in on top, you can cover it with a damp paper towel and let it sit on the counter for a really long time — I’ve let it go two hours — with no ill effects, as long as you don’t toss it. Leave that until the moment you’re ready to serve it. Takes so much stress out of company meals and allows you to spend the time you’d normally be assembling salad having a life giving drink and a happy chat with your guests. Perfect!
You can make pie, and you should
As mentioned, I feel strongly about pie for cultural reasons. If you can’t make it, find a decent bakery where you can buy one. To my way of thinking there aren’t many. Usually a manufactured crust (the kind you see in the freezer at the grocery store) is a dead giveaway that the product will suck. So is a big blocky rim on the pie or anything that looks like this.
So dry it makes me choke just looking at it.
As I’ve said, making pie crust from a mix is not hard. You just follow the directions on the box and fill the damn thing with fruit, sugar, flour and butter and shove it in the oven. But a few tricks are worth pointing out:
You can mix the dough with a fork. If I’m feeling particularly lazy, and I usually am, I use the electric mixer (for me, the Kitchenaid stand mixer is a gift from God) for about 15 seconds, just until the dough comes together.
Recipes always tell you to chill the dough before rolling it out, but if you leave it in the fridge for more than about 10 minutes it gets too hard to roll. Just saying.
For pumpkin pie, do not, I repeat DO NOT, bake the shell before filling it. That’s just crazy and the rim will burn before the filling is set. Speaking of which, never use anything but canned pumpkin. Fresh pumpkin pie is stringy and dealing with a whole pumpkin is a giant pain in the ass from start (lugging it home, cutting it up, seeding it, removing all that stringy stuff) to finish (Do I have enough puree? Too much? What is all this stringy crap in my pie? Eww). It is always disappointing, especially if you spent a whole freaking day making it when you could have just opened the damned can (always use plain puree and add your own spices, eggs, etc.) and caught up on Project Runway while it baked.
Making a prebaked shell for one crust pie gives me fits. The crusts always collapse or they shrink and become unusable, or the recipe calls for pie weights (what?) or tells you to fill the thing with dried beans while you bake it. Screw that. Just avoid them. Make a graham cracker crust (or use ginger snaps) or chuck the whole project and make brownies instead.
You can crimp the top and bottom crusts with a fork if you must, but I think this looks gross and it always burns because the crust is too thin. Plus the crust bonds with the pie plate and makes it really hard to cut and serve. See?
Ugly, overdone crimped edge. Yuck.
Better to use your thumb to pinch the edge between your index and middle fingers. It’s a tad Martha, but it looks so much nicer and the pieces hold together better. Look.
Nicely crimped and properly vented.
Apple pie: For the love of God, use only Macintosh or Rome apples. Any guest who requests a slice of cheddar for his pie should be asked to leave. Enough said.
Fill ‘er up: Go on, mound the fruit up high. There is nothing worse than a skimpy layer of filling. See top photo.
Lattice top pies: What are you on, crack?
Kitchen Slattern 