Chocolate Chunk Fudge Brownies

We finally finished Hedgie's new cage. We had him in a rabbit/small animal cage, but I wanted him to have a cage with bedding (instead of his blanket) for an easier clean up and to where he could use his wheel, which he refused to run on for months until now.This is what we started out with and this is what his new cage looks like now, its nothing fancy, but he enjoys it.

I actually made honey cornbread muffins yesterday to use up the extra buttermilk I had from the red velvet cupcakes, but I decided to post this recipe first since I talked about in the last post.

  I found this recipe in one of the many magazines that my mom brings home from work when they have leftovers that they didn't sell. I was going to make sweet sweet potatoes fries and call it "dessert" since I don't like eating sweet potatoes with my meal, but as dessert. Well, my dad didn't think that could be classified as a dessert so I made this recipe instead. I looked online like I do with most of the recipes I find to see if someone had already tried it or had any suggestions about it. I found the recipe online and the reviews were all good, but many said that they would lower the amount of sugar since the batter had 1 2/3 cups of sugar that made an 8x8 pan. I looked up another brownie recipe that I had to try to figure out how much sugar to add. That recipe only had 1 cup of sugar and made a big pan of brownies, so I decided to only add 1 1/4 cups of sugar to my new recipe to try it out.

  After the brownies cooled, I took a few to photography and taste. The brownies were really rich and were packed with chocolate, but not all that sweet. I then remembered that the recipe that I used to figure out the sugar ratio had a chocolate icing that went on top of the brownies to add more sweetness. I like the recipe as I has written out below since its not too sweet, but if you want more sweetness you can...

• up the sugar to 1 1/2 cup instead of the 1 1/4 cups
• you could use my icing/frosting recipe to top them. If you add the icing I would either add the nuts into the batter or top off the icing with them.
• keep the recipe as it is and serve it along something like ice cream or frozen yogurt to add more sweetness.

Chocolate Chunk Fudge Brownies

Adapted from: Fine Cooking Magazine No. 53

Serves: 6 (2 pieces each)

3/4 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs, room temp.
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup semi sweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup nuts, chopped


Heat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 8x8 pan.

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and add the cocoa. Whisk until smooth.
Add the sugar and whisk until blended. Add 1 egg and whisk until just blended. Whisk in the second egg and vanilla until just blended.
Mix the salt and flour together. Sprinkle the flour mix over the mixture and stir with a rubber spatula until just blended. Add the chopped chocolate and stir until combined.

Scrape the batter into the prepared baking pan and spread evenly. Scatter the nuts evenly over the batter, if using. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with small, gooey clumps of brownie sticking to it, 33 to 38 minutes (Mine were done at 35 minutes). Transfer the baking dish to a cooling rack and let cool completely.

Run a knife around the edges of the brownie and then pry it from the pan in one piece. Using a sharp knife, cut the cooled brownie into three equal strips and cut each strip into four equal pieces. The cooler the brownie is, the cleaner the cutting will be, but these fudgy brownies will always leave some sticky crumbs on the knife.

Notes:
- I adapted this recipe from Fine Cooking's brownie recipe, but I cut the sugar content way down because people who reviewed said that it was way too sweet. The original recipe had 1 2/3 cup of sugar, I used 1 1/4 cups.  (Read the bullets above)
- I used only 1/2 cup of chocolate chip to the batter instead of 1 cup.
- I combined walnuts and pecans to sprinkle on top.