Cooking Experiment 20061027

I don't know if this ever happens to anyone else but I found a bunch of Devil's Food Cake mixes in the pantry all close to their expiration dates. Not wanting to deal with baking a bunch of cakes I decided to use the cake mixes for brownies. Following the notion that a batch of brownies is a failed cake I went ahead and prepared them so that they'd hopefully fail to rise very much. Shorting on the water is a key principle here. This week I'm down to one cake mix and I decided today was a good day to make brownies. Okay, here's what I've done so far.

The Friday Maybe You'll Get Brownies Recipe

1 Devil's Food Cake Mix
1 Cup Ghiradelli Sweet Ground Chocolate and Cocoa (Never can have too much chocolate)
3 Eggs (In the past I've used two eggs. I'm using three today in the hopes that the result will hold together better than past run throughs.)
1/2 Cup Virgin Olive Oil (That's what I've got in the cupboard)
1/4 Cup Water
1 Bag Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips (They were on hand.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Spray brownie pan with cooking spray and set aside.

In mixing bowl, mix all ingredients but the chocolate chips together thoroughly.

Stir in chocolate chips.

Keep stirring until fairly well mixed.

Pour mixture into prepared pan and place in oven.

Cook for about 30 to 40 minutes. (Possibly less. I'm still on this step. You'll want to start checking after 20 minutes.)

Let stand for 1 hour before transferring to a platter for cutting.

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I'm using less liquid this time than I have previous. I'm a little worried that that might be a mistake but we'll soon see. The mixture was very difficult to stir this time. Not sure if that's good or bad, yet.

Cooking Experiment 20061027 Part II

Let me first update that cooking time to 20 to 30 minutes. I took the batch out at about 28 minutes because it seemed ready to come out. Now I wait an hour and see how easily it comes out of the pan. I'm thinking another quarter cup of liquid wouldn't have hurt. In the past I added about that much raspberry syrup to the mixture.

Cooking Experiment 20061027 Part III

Well, this is my final entry about the brownies. They came out of the pan okay. However, they're a little less well held together than I hoped. They fragment easily. If I were to do this again I'd reduce the ground chocolate to half a cup and maybe toss in an extra quarter cup of water. All in all, they came out quite rich, so that's good.