One bowl brownies

I had a chocolate craving recently and for some reason brownies were all that I could think of. Although I have enjoyed many a brownie I've never made them myself. Deb over at Smitten Kitchen assures that brownies are pretty much indestructable. (Hmm, maybe "no bad from-scratch brownies" are slightly different from "indestructable"). Anyway, so with these words of wisdom to bloster my confidence (it's only the second time baking in the new oven), I headed off to try the One-Bowl Brownie. I liked the whole "one bowl" idea.

I happily threw everything (at the required times) into the one bowl, and had a taste. I didn't have the best quality dark chocolate to add and I found the mix was really sweet. Really sweet. So I threw caution (and measuring implements) to the wind and started adding stuff. I added some dutch cocoa to deepen the chocolatey flavour and some coffee granules because I love the chocolate/coffee combination. It wasn't enough coffee to make a mocha flavour, just enough to really bring out the chocolate.

My plans started going awry in the cooking stage. Every brownie recipe I've ever seen has warned you not to over cook the brownies, so I was very skittish around the still-unfamiliar oven. Deb says that the brownies are ready when a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out with fudgy crumbs, but my toothpicks came out with fudgy crumbs even when the brownies weren't ready. I attacked the brownies with a knife to see inside the first time I checked (at 30 minutes) and it definately wasn't ready, so I put it back in for 7 or so minutes. DD thinks they were still underdone. I'm not sure. Is there an easier way to know when brownies are ready?

A side note on my oven: it doesn't have a clear door. I hate it. I like being able to see what's going on inside, but now I can't do that unless I open the oven and then it immediately loses so much heat that it takes forever to come back up to temperature. Grr.

Anyway, issues aside, the brownies tasted amazing. I sent them to work with DD and he said everyone really enjoyed them, which is very cool. Head on over to Smitten Kitchen for the recipe.