Brownies, How I Loathe Thee...

I hate brownies. Plain and simple.  It's not that I hate to eat brownies.  It's not that I hate to look at brownies.  I hate to make brownies, and I hate it with all my heart.

Whether you're employing the double-boiler, made-from-scratch method or the box-of-Ghirardelli-brownie-mix-from-Costco method, initially, you might think that making brownies is pretty easy.  That's all part of their evil little chocolatey plan, though, and this is where the weaker, less-experienced bakers are deceived.  You stir up the batter (Careful, don't mix it too much!  Brownies hate to be over mixed!), grease the pan, and pour in the thick gooey mass.  You put it into a perfectly preheated oven, set the timer a few minutes early (just in case!) and then sit back and watch "Elf" on TV while you wait for them to bake.  Fifty minutes or so later the timer will ding, you'll get up, you'll open the oven, and you'll see something like this:

Here's where the hating begins.

Every single other baked good that I make has some sort of test to see if it's ready: touch the top, it'll bounce back; stick a toothpick in the center, it should come out clean; the sides should pull away; the top should be golden brown... you know the deal.

Brownies, though, are like pears: there is a very brief, 5-second window during which they are absolutely perfect and if you fail to get to them during that window, they are completely and utterly inedible.  With pears, they're either horrifically unripened or disgustingly mushy and bruised.  With brownies, if you do not pull them out of the oven at the exact right time, they are either sticky chocolate soup or burnt charcoal briquettes with little chocolate chip nuggets mini pockets of hardened ash.

From my extensive brownie experience, though (I've made 6 batches so far tonight), I have come up with a  fail-proof method of figuring out whether or not your brownies are ready: if they've been in the oven for the allotted amount of time and you do not yet smell the acrid scent of burning chocolate, they're ready and by all that is good and holy TAKE THEM OUT OF THE OVEN RIGHT NOW.  Do not attempt the toothpick test.  Do not think, "Oh, maybe just a couple more minutes, they look a bit gooey."  Sweet heavens, woman, get your oven mitts on and pull that pan out of the oven this minute!!

Once you've pulled them out of the oven, set them on a cooling rack.  Don't look at them, don't speak badly about their mother, don't make sudden movements anywhere within a 10-foot radius of them, and for gosh sakes do NOT think to yourself: "Hmm, they look a bit squishy, maybe I'll just stick them back in for a couple minutes."

As for me, I've cut up all my brownies, I've cut off all the burnt bits I possibly could (I felt sort of like a butcher trimming off excess meat to save just the fillet), and I've made my peace with the fact that brownies are the most evil of all baked goods to make.  There is no hope for me, but perhaps with this warning other people can avoid some of the heartbreak and anguish I've had to endure.

On a final note, allow me to present you with a bit of headache-inducing trivia brought forth by my ever-knowledgeable young cousin:  The following is a grammatically correct sentence in the English language:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Stick THAT in your pipe and smoke it.