A Baker's Two Dozen.

When I have an order for my little hobby business, I tend to make a little extra for whomever is around. Besides, it gives me a chance to test out new ideas.
This go around, I submitted the option of either one dozen cookies or one pan of brownies to the winner of an auction on my friend Sam's rustic home decor business page. The winner of the auction chose to have a pan of my fudgy-style brownies with walnuts. Since I'd been wanting to try a new method of making my chocolate peanut butter brownies, I broke out two pans and doubled my recipe.

For any baking, I'm a big fan of using real butter if I can, but -especially- for cookies and brownies. Butter does something for these two items that margarine just can't do. Sorry. I will, of course, make any substitutions a patron may ask for, but I prefer they let me do my thing and just trust me that it will be work it. When I start these brownies, I take my room temperature butter and cream it. Then, I mix in vanilla extract and one my secrets, Watkin's Chocolate Extract. Once the extracts and butter are mixed, comes the sugar which also gets creamed in. When you cream in the sugar, FYI, the consistency is going to end up looking like wet sand. Don't worry, once the eggs are in, it gets wet again!

Once the wet mix is ready, in go the dry ingredients. Flour, baking powder and salt, of course, but then comes the cocoa powder. I use two types of cocoa powder. A normal run of the mill unsweetened cocoa, but also a dutch processed cocoa powder. The latter is darker, richer, and adds a depth of chocolaty flavor that you just don't get from the other. :)




The final step, is to bake them. Brownies are finicky. You'd figure with all the mixes they have for brownies that they'd be simple, but truthfully, they aren't. That's one reason why for a long time I didn't sell them (and another reason why I dread it when someone orders them.)  They can come out too dry or too wet soooo easily that sometimes it just isn't worth the hassle. Admittedly, though, they're my favorite to bake. This batch is a walnut batch, but in the picture you'll notice one row of lighter brownies with chips on top. These were my experimental row. They have a layer of PB brownie on top of the fudgy brownie and peanut butter chips on top! Mmm. 
So now I've got my shipment plus a dozen!