Some not-chocolate brownie recipes

Butterscotch brownies

1 stick butter (1/2 cup)
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
~7/8 cup flour (original recipe calls for 3/4, which makes them a little too greasy; I've seen other recipes call for 1 cup; I've been making it with somewhere between those two marks.)
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt

Melt the butter; stir in the sugar. Add the eggs and stir. Add everything else and stir. Pour batter into an 8x8 baking pan (greased, if you like, but it's usually buttery enough to not need it), and bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.


Variation: slightly orangey brownies

• Substitute white sugar for the brown sugar.
• Add the juice and zest of one clementine orange.

Variation: coconut-spice brownies

I don't feel the need to experiment with coconut-ginger cookies anymore - these hit the flavor profile I was going for, bang-on. You might actually be able to roll them into cookies, though - the mixture is more dough than batter, and I had to press it into the pan instead of pour it.

• Substitute 1/2 cup of coconut oil instead of butter. (It will be easiest to work with if you put the coconut oil in the microwave a bit - I discovered from two different tries that freshly-melted oil stirred in better than started-as-room-temperature-liquid oil.)
• Substitute white sugar for brown sugar.
• These are more cookie-like than brownie-like. 1 cup of flour makes them sandy (which Jerry preferred); 3/4 cup makes them sturdier (which I preferred), but they were difficult to cut after I let them cool too long; I had to pop them onto a cutting board and bust out the big chef's knife. Neither version is tender-chewy.
• Add 1/2 tsp. each of ground cinnamon, ground cloves, and ground ginger.
• Omit vanilla, or substitute coconut extract.
• Optional: I accidentally doubled the salt in one experiment, to 1/2 tsp. It was noticeably salty but surprisingly good. Worth repeating, if you're feeling a bit salty.

Cocoa brownies

So my husband walks into the kitchen the other day; he stops, sniffs, turns around, and says: "Are you making brownies?"

"No," I say. I had just cooked something else, so the kitchen smelled like something, but it wasn't brownies.

A pause, and then, wistfully: "Could you?"

Dude never asks for anything, food-wise. Never. I can't even get him to express an opinion on his preferences for the week's dinners, when asked directly. He must want them pretty bad, and I can't possibly say no to that. So I ask him what kind he wants; I've been playing with my butterscotch brownies recipe, attempting variations on it: we had a successful orange brownie, and an incredibly good coconut-spice brownie.

Another pause, and then, hesitantly, "Chocolate?"

Ruh-roh. I don't know how to make chocolate brownies, except out of a box. I don't know how to make good chocolate brownies at all.

I experimented with them once or twice, once upon a time, because they're the freaking standard brownie: something I should know how to make. But they weren't awesome, and I hadn't tried again yet. I'm not a chocolate addict, so we wouldn't normally have the right ingredients on hand, either, except that cocoa was among the versatile-and-fairly-nonperishable ingredients I decided I should learn to use, to expand my options for those desperate pantry-dinner nights. (Like rice, canned beans, sage from the monster plant in the herb garden...)

A long time ago, I'd bookmarked Smitten Kitchen's Best Cocoa Brownies as a recipe I wanted to try but never got around to, so now was the time. And they were AWESOME.

For the step with heating the butter/sugar/etc., I melted the butter in the microwave and then stirred the other ingredients in. It worked fine for me. I boggled at the large amount of cocoa and small amount of flour - I have never done such a thing before, and worried that the lack of flour would make them turn out very gooshy - but it turned out just fine. The cocoa must stand in structurally for the flour somehow, I don't know how that works. I baked them for 35 minutes, and let them sit and cool for an hour or two before I tried to take them out of the pan.

Our house is now covered in chocolate brownie crumbs, and I'm going to have to get more cocoa soon, because I may only have enough for one more batch, and that is eventually going to be a problem.

Calorie-packed, somewhat healthy smoothies

I've been experimenting a lot with smoothies lately. Well, with pretty much any food that's quick to make, filling, and only requires one hand to eat. I found a base recipe for peanut butter and banana smoothies and have come up with a few components that I can mix and match depending on what I'm in the mood for:

• frozen banana - I cut these in half and stick them in the freezer so they're ready to grab
• soy milk - or any kind of milk or juice, really, but I prefer soy (we have the vanilla kind, too, so it adds some flavor)
• peanut butter - this adds a nice texture and lots of calories
• oats - still not sure what I think about oats... they seem to add a slightly bitter taste, although they do make it more filling
• honey - for sweetening
• cocoa powder - mainly to make the smoothies more tempting for the men in the household
• vanilla ice cream - just makes it taste better (and it's not like I'm trying to make this low-fat or anything)
• greek yogurt - adds more protein
• wheat germ - I forget why this is healthy, but I remember it's supposed to be good while you're pregnant, so I figure it must be a good thing
• other fruits, frozen or not

My general method is to put the solid ingredients in the cup first, then pour in enough soy milk to almost cover them. We have a handheld bender which is pretty easy to clean, although it has a hard time blending the frozen bananas sometimes.

Some good combos I've found so far:
banana, peanut butter, oats, wheat germ (just a teaspoon or so), honey, soy milk
banana, peanut butter, cocoa powder, ice cream, soy milk
banana, strawberries, greek yogurt, honey, soy milk

I've been meaning to try out some other components, like molasses, so I'll update this as I go...