Recipe #8: Carol’s Brownies

In his run for the Republican party Presidential nomination, Ron Paul garnered a demographic of supporters and volunteers otherwise surprising for a septuagenarian conservative: college students and young adults. Was it Representative Paul’s non-interventionist foreign policy and critical eye on the Federal Reserve that endeared him to this new generation of voters? Maybe so. Or… perhaps it was his stance against the war on drugs. You might know what it’s like to be a college student.

So this recipe for brownies might be more to a hopeful quasi-Libertarian than just a tried family favorite. I am not suggesting the Paul family has been doing – or even espousing – anything illegal: they seem an upright (even overachieving) bunch. It’s just… not hard to suppose that this would be the go-to recipe for untold numbers of celebrants should Ron Paul’s take on the legalization of currently-banned substances be enacted into law.

Basically, they’re brownies from scratch, made from things you might suppose (and/or wish for).

What it takes to bake.
(NOTE: The contents of the baggie are purely notional.)

Baker’s chocolate and butter

Chocolate and fats

melted most smoothly

The main flavor

while eggs and sugar get blended

I tried to make this as smooth as possible without over-mixing

and those two liquids get combined

Like an oil spill

along with the other usual ingredients for brownies: flour, baking powder, vanilla, and – I quote: “chopped pecans (optional)”. O Carol Paul! We’re Texans, are we not? For us, there is no option not to add pecans. …Also, this would be a good point to measure in any additional ingredients you might take it upon yourself to add.

Along with what-have-you

Mix the whole thing thoroughly,

Stirs up easily

spread the batter out in a pan,

For once in a baking recipe, the recommended
9" x 13" pan seems the correct size

and bake.

All straightforward so far. But this is where the recipe takes a turn for the odd, with Carol Paul relating “A good way to frost brownies - the 2012 version of not having to ice them!” – this being to spread “a bag” of chocolate chips and “a bag” of white chocolate chips (also adding chopped nuts “if desired”; see comment above) “over the baked brownies and return them to the oven for 1 minute”. This is supposed to provide an easy, suitable topping for the brownies, though upon reading the recipe at first it didn’t seem right. But I took the recipe at its word and gamely did as suggested. I also figured it would be easier and more even to mix the topping ingredients

Looks like an over-indulgent trail mix

before spreading them onto the baked brownies

Is that a s’mores casserole?

and popping them back into the hot oven for… a minute? I checked after that time and there was no appreciable change to the chocolate chips, so I added thirty seconds to the finishing time in the oven. All that seemed to happen was that the chocolate chips got shinier.

Not much melting gone on

At this point the best I could hope was for the residual heat of the freshly-baked brownies to melt the chips further, enough to make them stick together for some sort of integrated topping on the brownies. But, even after letting the whole pan cool overnight, it was not to be.

What the heck is that?!?

The substratum – the mixed, baked brownies – cut and served just fine, but the topping of chips and nuts just tumbled off the surface of each piece. The elements of the topping didn’t hold together at all. Looks like the 2013 version of not having to ice the brownies would entail leaving the chip-covered brownies back in the oven for five or ten minutes, or however long it would take for the chips to truly melt together (without burning the contents of the pan).

But judging from sampling of this batch of brownies, I likely wouldn’t again bother to get this type of topping right: it simply doesn’t impress me as appealing. The chocolate chips are too much of a solid candy coating that clashes with the more usual and serviceable brownie layer, which was the best part of the final result. The brownies themselves are of the fudge-like variety, quite smooth and tasty. They clearly would have been better with a traditional frosting or even no topping at all. Taken altogether, though, the final outcome of the recipe was… not at all good. I just wanted to try all the options for this recipe – at least those that are given in the cookbook and are legally allowed in my state.

The recipe does not give any variations for high-altitude baking. But I’m confident those of you in the higher parts of Colorado and the state of Washington will know what to do.

Lesson learned: One should be fully informed before varying a brownie recipe

Rating: Two out of five tablespoons of an unspecified dried herbaceous substance