Appeale

Happy early Valentine’s Day! Hallmark holiday or not I’m all for Valentine’s celebrations. Me? I got an early Valentine’s surprise today (yay daisies).  Tomorrow I’m going to celebrate with Meyer Lemon Turnovers at the Temescal Farmer’s Market in the morning. Afternoon full of the bed and Chris Meloni (sorry Neil) ala law and order SVU, and dinner at Garibaldis.

I haven’t been blogging much lately – mostly due to a random trip back to Iowa. I found a roundtrip ticket for 140 bucks (CHEAP!), and jumped at the chance to go home. Of course the same weekend that snow pummeled the East Coast, and in Iowa snow fell from Saturday night through Tuesday morning, which made for interesting travel conditions. Fortunately I made it back to sunny Oakland and delicious clementines. To get back in the swing of baking/cooking/blogging I decided to revisit an old favorite: gooey, fudgy, chocolatey brownies. This is a pretty simple/standard recipe that takes hardly any time at all. If you need a chocolate fix give it a shot!

Choco Brownies

Ingredients
2/3 c all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
3 Tbsp cocoa
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate
4 oz butter
1 tsp coffee
 (or espresso) grounds
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3 eggs, well beaten

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Using an electric mixer (or a strong hand) beat sugars and vanilla until well combined. Add eggs one at a time. Scrape after all the eggs have been added.

In a separate bowl mix together the flour, salt, coffee grounds until well combined.

Meanwhile melt the butter (I did about 1 minute and an additional 30 seconds in the microwave) and chocolate until smooth. Add the melted chocolate/butter mixture to the sugar/egg mixture and mix on high speed until just combined. Next add the flour mixture on a slow setting until just combined. Pour the batter into an 8×8 pan (either lined with parchment or greased), and bake for 35 minutes. Rotate half way through, and cool completely before serving.