Brownies Make Everything Better, or, Disaster, Averted [brownies]

I am always in a little bit of a funk after returning from a vacation.  As soon as we cross the threshold back into our apartment I get a little cranky.  I sit on the couch with my laptop and mope.  The suitcases do not get unpacked, I do not start a load of laundry, and the last thing I want to think about is unloading the dishwasher.

Luckily, I promised my grad school class some sweet treats for our next meeting, so I was forced back into the kitchen almost immediately upon my return.  I began by thinking of something simple.  Chocolate chip cookies simple.  Not waiting for butter to soften simple.  But then, this recipe caught my eye, and I thought of the mint chips I’ve been harboring in an air-tight container since the holiday season.

As I melted the chocolate and butter, I started feeling less icky and more like myself.  But when I reached my favorite part of the batter process, stirring in the flour, things didn’t thicken up.  The batter was way too runny to make cookies.  I added 1/4 C flour to no avail.

So I said, forget it, sprayed a 8 x 8 pan with cooking spray and made brownies instead of cookies.  Disaster averted.

And you know what?  With the addition of the mint chips, these serve as a great substitution for their more time-consuming cousins, grasshopper brownies.  They have the texture I love, not too cakey and dry, not too fudgy and buttery, and come together super quickly.

Michelle, whose blog I enjoy, suggests measuring the ingredients by weight if the batter comes out too runny.  So perhaps that’s what I’ll try next.