Bodacious, Bad-Ass Brownies

I've been loving browsing through my favorite blogs via my steady supply of RSS feeds while expressing CBoy's milk for a couple weeks now and this link is all-time proof of the worthiness of that particular time investment. It's to The Perfect Recipe brownies by Pamela Anderson (the Cooks Illustrated one, not the giant boob mama). GoodyBlog talks chocolate specifics so I will admit that I deviated from their recommendations to cater to our particular brand of sweet toothiness. I used 2 oz unsweetened Ghirardelli's and 4 oz good ol' Nestle semisweet chocolate chips. With a couple more handfuls of chocolate chips thrown in just to be on the safe side.

These are seriously the best brownies I have ever had, chewy, moist, and delightful and you all know I am pretty disdainful of the cacao bean products. More importantly, the CandyMan himself loves them. This recipe is a total keeper.

Fudgy, Chewy, Cakey Brownies

2/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking powder
Vegetable cooking spray
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate
4 oz. bittersweet or semisweet chocolate
10 Tbsp. (1 stick plus 2 Tbsp.) unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 large eggs
3/4 cup toasted walnuts, pecans, macadamia nuts or peanuts (optional)

1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and preheat oven to 325°F

2. Whisk flour, salt and baking powder in a small bowl; set aside. Spray an 8-inch baking pan with vegetable cooking spray. Fit a 16-by-8-inch sheet of foil in pan and up two sides, so you can use foil overhang as a handle to pull cooked brownies from pan. Spray sheet of foil with vegetable cooking spray.

3. Melt chocolates and butter in a medium bowl over a pan of simmering water. Remove from heat; whisk in sugar and vanilla. Whisk in eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each one before adding the next. Continue to whisk mixture until completely smooth. Add dry ingredients; whisk until just incorporated. Stir in nuts, if desired.

4. Pour batter into prepared pan; bake until a toothpick or cake tester inserted into center comes out with wet crumbs, 35 to 45 minutes. (Do not wait until the toothpick comes out clean!)

5. Cool brownies in pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Use foil handles to pull brownies from pan. Completely cool brownies on rack, at least 3 hours. Cut into squares and serve. If not serving immediately, do not cut brownies. (Whole brownie cake can be wrapped in plastic wrap, then foil, and refrigerated for up to 5 days.)

I'd like to credit GoodyBlog, one of my new parent-fluff reads, for many of my favorite tidbits lately (gumdrop trees, towel animals, mama spine curvage, baby Samaritans). Don't really know the netiquette for citing pass-through sources, hmmm, but I guess this is it? And next time I will just say "link via GoodyBlog" as I belatedly realized some other bloggers do. Thinking this over inspired me to update my links (so check them out for other good reads).