The KBAL Brownie Initiative

Analysis

As I was making these, I was brought back to the other truly disastrous brownie recipe in the book, Macadamia Mocha Brownies. Once again, there was nary a smidge of melted chocolate to be found. And, good lord, the recipe called for melted MARGARINE (melted and then cooled???, no less). We all know my feelings about that ingredient. I guess I can't complain, I asked for something in the WTF category. At least the book has a high percentage of those recipes.

The thing I had difficulty in finding for this recipe were the chocolate mint wafers. My first thought was "ooh, Girl Scout Thin Mints." But then I realized that those cookies were too yummy to waste on this recipe. As I thought about it, I decided that I was really unclear on exactly what was meant by 'wafer'. Wafer can refer to a lot of things, but the only cookies specifically labeled 'wafer' are those ones that are like thin layers of ice cream cone with the creme filling in between and come in 3 flavors: vanilla, chocolate and pink. I read this line in the recipe and thought "Well, they must make them with green creme filling as well." It must be some weird regional thing because My Kroger doesn't carry them. I had to settle on some Thin Mint wanna-bes called Grasshoppers, but hey they had a picture of Johnny Depp on them, so it was ok. (That was for you, Laura).

At least this was a one bowl recipe. I dumped everything in, mixed it up, broke up the cookies, mixed them in and reached for the nuts. At this moment, for some strange reason, I glanced at the instructions one more time and groaned. I wasn't supposed to mix the nuts in, I was supposed to put them in between two layers of the batter. UGH! After I wrestled with smoothing out the top layer without churning up chopped nuts, I popped the pan in the oven and cooked it for 45 minutes.

These brownies were a bit weird to make and smelled a bit 'heavy' while they were cooking, but the batter was strangely addictive. Must have been the Johnny Depp cookies.

The brownies actually taste ok. The texture and initial sensation is one of eating chocolate chip bar cookies. The nuts add crunch and the chopped up cookies add little bits of minty, chocolately smushiness that is incongruous with the other textures, but at the same time, sort of works. These are a strange little dessert that belongs at a family picnic, but not on a list of best brownies.

• Prep time: 20 minutes
• Cooking time: 45 minutes
• Total time: 2 hours (includes cooling)

Modifications

Do I have to say it? I substituted butter for margarine. That should probably go under 'Improvements'.

Improvements

Um, adding or changing anything would just be way too weird.

My Rating - scale of 1-10

• PITA Rating: 5 (I had to spend 10 minutes in the cookie aisle looking for no-existent cookies. AND I had to chop nuts)
• Difficulty Rating: 2
• Recipe Complexity (over a basic no-frills brownie): 4
• Texture: 4
• Flavor: 5
• Overall Rating: 3 (these are strangely addictive, but still not brownies)