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.