Tasty Tuesday

 Mixed feelings toward baking:  I've always been lead to believe that, unlike cooking, baking was more of an exact science - that the ratios and "order of operations" were much more important than in any other kind of cooking - and that there are people who will insist on this.  Then there are people like my sister, who is a fairly experienced baker (it's both her hobby and her career), whose attitude is, "Eh.  Just throw some stuff together, it'll be fine."  

Today, for example, my sister called me to take inventory of my pantry; she decided that while she was at my house today (her fiance was coming by to fix my husband's car, so she and I figured we'd take advantage of it and eek out a social day) she and I should bake brownies.  The problem is, she neglected to ask after the amount I had available of each ingredient, or what kind of "bake ware" I had on hand.  Once she arrived and began to read out the ingredients and measurements - the plan was peanut butter and chocolate brownies - it was apparent that I had only about half the flour we'd need.

Such conversations as this followed:

Me:  Two cups of flour?  Sifted?
Her:  Hmm?
Me:  Sifted?
Her:  I don't fucking know, who cares?
Me:  ...If it's sifted, and not packed, this might be enough.
Her:  Eh.  Just... just dump it all in.
Me:  All the flour?
Her:  Yeah, it's about half, right?  About a cup?
Me:  I... yeah, I guess.
Her:  We'll cut the recipe in half then, it's not a big deal.
Me:  How do you cut "three eggs" in half?
Her:  Fuck if I know.  Just put two eggs, hell.  It doesn't matter. 

 

After cutting the recipe roughly in half, it was obvious the size of the pan she had brought to bake in would be too large; unfortunately, because I am not a baker, all I had was a muffin pan (a dozen).  Also, because of the inexact ration of liquid/dry ingredient, the batter was the consistency of slighty runny cookie dough.

 

So we had brownie cookie muffins.  With chocolate chips on top.

( They didn't turn out too badly, actually )

Honestly, I had hoped to post a proper recipe here after we had finished, but in light of my sister's running commentary regarding the baking process, I'll instead outline it:

Pre-heat the oven? Oh, yeah, you should probably do that. Hmm? Um... 350? Dammit, it's almost always 350, just trust me. Anyway. Mash half a stick of butter up in a bowl. Yeah, I probably should have called ahead so you could have taken it out the fridge and let it soften first. Then scoop - what's half of a quarter? An eighth? Do you have an eighth-of-a-cup measuring cup? Um, fill your quarter-cup cup about... half way? With peanut butter. And then mix that in with the butter. Half a teaspoon of vanilla extract - yeah, I use Imitation Vanilla. Do you know how much vanilla extract costs? Now, half a cup of white sugar. Are those coffee grounds? How did you get coffee grounds in your sugar? Well, you should wipe the spoon first! Anyway. Now, a quarter cup packed light brown sugar. No, it should retain the shape of the cup. That's how you know you did it right. A half-teaspoon baking powder. Now put in the flour. No, all the flour. Just... look, the worst that'll happen is they'll be a little dry. Just dump the flour in. And now put in two eggs.  And peanut butter chips.  Just... I don't care, however much you want.  What the hell.  Seriously, are you worried that they'll be "too delicious" if you put in too many?  Jesus.  I should get a fork to mix this. Oh. Oh, man. Um, these might not be... brownies? I don't know what they are. They might be cupcakes, they might be cookies. Only time will tell.

It worked for her -- this time. Perhaps I should be less gunshy about experimenting with baking.