MY MARATHON BROWNIE BAKING SESSION

Hello all. Yes, I know it's been a while since you've heard from me, but strangely enough, they've been keeping me busy at work. Apparently once someone figures out that you are actually competent enough to get something done, they give you more work, and then more work, until you're going in on your days off and working from home, too. I keep hoping that as soon as the next project, holiday, etc is over, it'll get better, but it hasn't yet. I guess we'll see.

So onto the title of my post-... in addition to working on my days off, I've some how gotten myself into making wedding brownies for my friends. As you guys know, Kjell and Huong are getting married in June here in the Bay Area. The last time they were here they were doing wedding planning and thinking of ways they could save money. I mentioned that they didn't need to get a cake (typical wedding cakes cost a minimum of $4/person. Multiply that by 125 guests and you're look at $500) and so I proposed that they have wedding brownies. Pretty easy to make, and it'd be much cheaper than $500. And of course, I volunteered my services. So here I am, making batches of test brownies on my days off. I've made 4 batches in 2 days and am trying to figure out the best one.

The annoying this is that there are so many types of brownies, and not everyone likes the same ones. Do you want it cakey, fudgey, dry, moist, with nuts, with chocolate chips???You could keep going on and on. So far, the Alice Medrich brownie recipe from her Bittersweet cookbook is a loser. But I'm liking Ina's recipe for Outrageous Brownies. Tom says that he doesn't love the texture, cause you can feel the granulated sugar, and I kinda agree with him, but I do like the texture of them.

I've got two more batches in the oven. One recipe my Nick Malgeri and the other recipe from Cooks Illustrated. I'm hoping that one of these turns out to be the one. Meanwhile, we have stacks of brownies at home that need to be liquidated. I plan on taking them at work, but I wish that I had some friends around so that I could just pass them out. Ah well. I guess you guys just need to visit.