No such thing as an easy brownie recipe

After reading about my troubles with a raw Avocado, Lime & Coconut ‘Cheesecake’, a friend kindly suggested I should start at the beginning. ‘Why don’t you make a brownie? That’s easy!’ As always, I dived into brownie baking with full enthusiasm.

My first attempt was very unsuccessful. And there is no one else to blame but me. See, I googled a recipe and chose the one that had all the measurements in grams. However, I only had measuring cups with me. I am not sure why I haven’t found a different recipe or went to buy a kitchen scale… Instead, I thought I know better.

Well, I was wrong. Shaun nearly broke his tooth when trying to bite into it. ‘At least it looks like brownie…’ were his encouraging words.

After binning the first batch, I went to Walmart and bought a nice little kitchen scale. This time I followed the recipe word by word. It all went well, until I took the brownie out of an oven. It smelled divine! It looked delicious! Shaun was proudly looking at me and couldn’t wait to try it.

‘Hm… it’s better than the previous one! You are certainly improving. But… do we have any ice cream left by any chance?’

And so the second batch went to the bin too. It was less hard than the first try, but still very dry. And, well, not very enjoyable to eat.

‘What am I doing wrong??’

‘Maybe you have left it in the oven for too long. Try to take it out earlier. With brownie, it can actually be undercooked.’ my friend suggested.

I had the third batch in the oven. I was checking on it every few minutes. ‘Nah, this is too soft. Still not enough. OK, maybe a little bit more… Oh nooooo, I’ve gone too far again!’

I didn’t even serve the third one. I decided to make a banana cake instead!

…a couple of hours later…

…and after just as many issues with the banana cake as I had with the brownie…

‘OK, I think it’s just not my day (or most likely century) for baking… I think I’ll make a salad instead!’