You know you're slightly addicted to food blogging when...

by Stephanie

...you create an absolute disaster in the kitchen and your first thought is "Do I want to blog about this?"

Readers, I feel like I am not that uptight of a person. My room is usually an organized mess, minus the organized part, and you know, I enjoy going with the flow and laughing at what happens along the way. But last Saturday night...oh goodness. A veritable disaster. My mother put me in charge of the Easter dessert, and I had all these visions in my head of a 13-layer cake complete with sugared pansies and the most perfect fondant hands could create. Kidding. But I did have the ambition to make a marble cake, and that all came crumbling (ha) down when my mom took the cake out of the oven 20 minutes before it was due to be done and called out, "Honey...I can't get it out of the pan." The cake was completely rock hard. I went over the recipe later, which called for milk in the ingredient list but never included when it was to be added in the procedure part...and so I completely forgot about it and never included the milk. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Talk about perfectionism rearing its ugly head. I have never been so upset about failure before. Baking is my thing. I don't do the whole botched cake thing. Was the world coming to an end?

At my wit's end (it was 1:30 am, people), I decided to make the brownie recipe on the back of the King Arthur unbleached all-purpose flour bag. And they were wonderful indeed. I suppose even failures can be fortuitous at times. Because when push comes to shove, even a 13-layer cake can't top a hot fudge brownie sundae on Easter Sunday.

(according to the King Arthur flour bag) The Best Fudge Brownies Ever

1 cup butter
2 1/4 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups Dutch-process cocoa
1/2 teaspoon salt (inc. to 1 tsp if using unsalted butter, which you should be doing anyway)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups King Arthur unbleached all-purpose flour (the good stuff, none of this whole wheat stuff, seriously)
2 cups chocolate chips (I chopped up one 4 oz. bar and got too tired to do the rest. It was still good)

Preheat the oven to 350. Lightly grease a 9x13 pan.

In a saucepan set over low heat, melt the butter, then add the sugar and stir to combine. Return the mixture to the heat briefly, just until it's hot but not bubbling. It'll become more shiny as you stir. Transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl.

Stir in the cocoa, salt, baking powder, and vanilla. Add the eggs, beating until smooth; then add the flour and chocolate, beating until well combined. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake for 28-30 minutes or until a toothpick in the middle comes out clean.

No pictures from that little event, but here are pretty flowers from the City! Specifically, Bi-Rite Market (adorable).