No Cut Brownies

FIRST! Read the box, set your oven to BAKE at the 350 degree (or other) recommended temperature and press 'Start' when you take the box out of the cabinet.

I like brownies - with walnuts - sometimes with coconut flakes, but mostly with walnuts.

Problem is, the 9 x 9 pan of baked brownie is a (here come the pun) a tough nut to cut, "Use a plastic fork. Make short sawing motions" is what they advise on the box. Yeah, right!

There has to be a better way to make a "bite-size" brownie. And I think I found it.

First, I tried a fancy pan thing that came apart. It leaked, it was difficult, the results were not much better than attacking the nine by nine.

My solution?

Cut 'em before you bake 'em!!

Oven (see above)

Stick Blender

Spatula

Box of brownie mix. (I buy the least expensive. Boxes are the same - weight's not - Unit Pricing!)

Oil (whatever the wife buys - if there's a reason to use a specific type, let me know - I'll try it.

Water (well water here)

Eggs (Fresh free-range eggs laid about fifty feet from the kitchen)

Walnuts (Large pieces so you can bite into walnut!)

Optionally, Shredded Coconut ("Some time you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't." Peter Paul/Weird Al Yankovic)

Cup cake pan

Cup cake paper liners

One Gallon ZipLock Baggie

Well, at the risk of restating the obvious . . .

In a large bowl, combine three eggs (I like a more 'cake-like' brownie. Hard core folks only use two eggs), and

2/3 cup of Oil, and

1/4 cup of water

Beat the dickens out of these 'wet' ingredients - injecting lot of air bubbles.

Have place to put your stick blender!

Then, add the brownie mix and the walnuts.

Combine by folding the mix into the wet ingredients, then fold the wet ingredients into the mix and repeat until there isn't a dry ingredient in the bowl. Adding the dry over and to the wet makes the mixing easier - no dry spot at the bottom of the bowl.

I use a 1/4 cup measure to scoop up a portion of the mix and pour it into a cup cake liner held in the cup cake pan and repeat twenty-four times.

It isn't quite that easy, the mix doesn't really 'pour' that well. I have to coax the last bit out with a small spatula (or finger in a (PTP) pinch).

If it wasn't for the large pieces of Walnut, a Piping Bag would do nicely. You can make one out of a baggie. Fill it with the mixture, get it all down to the bottom of the baggie, cut one of the bottom corners and you can 'pipe' the mixture much easier than you can pour it!

Your oven should have reached the desired temperature by now.

Put the goods onto the bottom shelf and watch TV for twenty-eight minutes.

Pull them out of the oven and push a clean toothpick into the center of the puffy-est one. If it comes out clean, remove the trays and set them on a rack to cool or about ten minutes or so (not critical).

When cool enough to handle / bite into, put them all in the gallon baggie - left in the open air, they tend to dry out.

A bit of each brownie remains on the cup cake liner. However, with a bit of practice, you can scrape almost all of it off with a simple dinner knife for that 'good to the last crumb' bit of satisfaction.

*Apologies to McGarrett