Moosewood Fudge Brownies

The Moosewood Collective has become legendary in my recipe book library, and these brownies are not only chocolatey and delicious, they are SUPER easy to make!  If you don't own any Moosewood Cookbooks, I highly recommend them, especially the original (the newest editions have revised recipes to cut down butter and sugar content).

These brownies originated 30 years ago, and have been served in the Moosewood Restaurant ever since.  They take about ten minutes to prepare, and only twenty to bake.  Your friends will be impressed you didn't cook brownies from a box.

Ingredients

1/2 C butter

3 oz unsweetened chocolate (I use TJ's baking chocolate or Baker's Chocolate)

1 C lightly packed brown sugar

1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

2 eggs lightly beaten

1/2 C unbleached white flour

How it's done

Preheat the oven to 350 and butter the baking pan.

In a large pot on the stove, melt butter and chocolate together on low heat, stirring to avoid scorching.  Once all is melted, remove from heat.  Add the sugar and vanilla and beat by hand with a whisk.   Add the eggs and beat well.  Stir in flour and mix until smooth.

Pour batter into a buttered 8 or 9 inch baking pan.  Bake for about 20 min until they begin to just pull away from the pan, and still fudgy in the center.  Bake an additional five minutes if you prefer cake like brownies.

This recipe can easily be doubled and baked in a lasagna sized pan.  I also tried using my new dutch oven for this recipe, and it worked great for melting the butter and chocolate, and then once everything was combined in the pot, I popped the dutch oven in the oven.  One pot brownies :-)

I highly recommend whipped cream or ice cream with these.  Oh, and I made a variation called 'Brownie Surprise'.  It's brownies with strawberries cut up on top and marinated for a little bit.