brownies

These are the first things I recall watching through the oven door as if it were a t.v., sitting there patiently watching the wonder of transformation of food develop by extreme heat. Brownies are also the first thing I made by following instructions on a box. That trick of marketing pre-mixed ingredients in a box with instructions to include something unboxable like eggs or butter and leaving the impression the product is not just convenient but all too much for you, beyond regular students and non-specialists, had me fooled for decades.

But that changed overnight.

One time a girlfriend invited me to a party arranged by one of her co-working friends. I was her date. I didn't know anyone there. I was good for that sort of thing. I shine right up and actually can behave acceptably polite and put on an act kindness and consideration for periods. For some reason she said to the whole group outside on the patio, "Oh, Chip can make brownies with household ingredients" and everyone looked at me like some kind of wizard and suddenly I was somehow dared to prove it.

The only chocolate I saw at the house was the Hershey's cocoa powder in a tin. (Sad. Teenage boys were fake/wrestling through the whole thing, and that is the only chocolate around. A wealthy and lively energetic suburban home, yet such stark chocolate-poverty.)

The chocolate powder is red. Weird.

The cocoa is not Dutched. That is, not processed with lye. This mild treatment done with lye called "Dutching" in regard to chocolate is one of the few processing procedures that actually does make the product better. Corn treated similarly is better too. But Chocolate cocoa tastes a lot better when Dutched. It's milder. The Hershey's cocoa powder is not unless it specifically says so. The kind her friend had was not. Nevertheless I used what they had, produced a failed chocolate cake, for that is what brownies are, and in very short order, no problem at all, no break in the tempo of partying outside, brownies were produced as if by incantation and I won the admiration of somebody else's peers who I never saw again.

Except for one lady I sold two paintings. A pair. Two relatively small paintings, easy as heck, etudes as far as I was concerned, motifs I'd done dozens of times by age twelve, Tut and his wife, easiest $600.00 I ever made. Toni told me the woman intimated, he really needs to raise his prices.

True. Those sacks of plaster at Home Depot aren't getting any cheaper, neither are the children's watercolor sets with 8 separate colors.

These brownies here are made with dark chocolate, not cocoa powder. I have no idea what they taste like, they're still too hot, but the batter is superb.