The KBAL Brownie Initiative

Analysis

Well, here we go again with melted jelly and vinegar. I was just bummed I didn't get to buy and liquer.

These were really easy to make, just time consuming and requiring 3 bowls and chopping nuts and slicing strawberries. Wait a minute... I guess these were a bit more difficult than I thought. Plus, I left my husband with the shopping list and he purchased the smaller jar of seedless strawberry jelly, so I had to make the 10:30 run to Kroger to get another one. This just keeps getting worse!

Anyway, back to the baking. The basic brownie was simple, it just had many parts (and chopped nuts, ugh!). That went together pretty easily. The making of the jelly glaze on top was stymied by the lack of jelly and the trip to the store. This added another half an hour on to the time. Thank goodness for the timed cook feature on my oven, so I didn't have to wait around for the brownie part to cook before getting my jelly.

The brownies came out when "a knife inserted in the center comes out ALMOST clean". What does 'almost clean' mean? When does it go from being 'too dirty' to 'almost clean'? I've never encountered that one before, so I took my best guess. The jelly went on easy, I put the parts for the chocolate glaze in a bowl, left it in the microwave and went to bed. I was just too tired to wait for the whole mess to cool. I considered putting the glaze on while the thing was still hot, but then that would have been cheating.

Next morning the glaze was completed and spread over the top, strawberries were sliced and attractively arranged on top and it was done. I don't know if I should count the 5 hours of sleeping in the 'total time' count or not. It may be that this recipe causes sleepiness and I need to inform people to plan to take a nap between the jelly and chocolate glaze parts.

These were EXTREMELY fudgy brownies. The flavors were nice and subtle, and it wasn't a total sugar bomb like the Raspberry Supreme Brownies of two weeks ago. There was a hint of chocolate covered strawberry flavor that was good. I think the fresh strawberries sitting in a layer of chocolate frosting helped with that. I would make these again, except the next time, I'm going to do the shopping!

• Prep time: 45 minutes
• Cooking time: 25 minutes
• Total time: 2 hours (includes cooling and frosting. Add 5 hours of nap time if needed)

Modifications

I thinly sliced large strawberries for the top, because you can't get small ones in the store in the middle of February. Also, I doubled the recipe.

Improvements

More strawberry! These would be good with a strawberry frosting.

My Rating - scale of 1-10

• PITA Rating: 6 (three bowls, the trip to the store, chopping nuts and no liquer helped on this. I would have given this an 8, but the nap helped.)
• Difficulty Rating: 6 (two layers with goo in the middle)
• Recipe Complexity (over a basic no-frills brownie): 6
• Texture: 7 (great fudginess!)
• Flavor: 5 (good, but not very berry)
• Overall Rating: 6