Chocolate Fudgey Brownies made from scratch!

• 3/4 cup butter, melted and cooled (if you don’t melt the butter you will not be able to spread the batter around the dish)
• 2 eggs (if you double, use 5)
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Add ins: 1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips, semi sweet chocolate chips, nuts

1. Melt butter and set aside to cool (so you don’t scramble your eggs). Mix flour, cocoa and salt in bowl and set aside. Please note, if you have the time, it is totally worth it to brown the butter first.
2. Cream together butter and sugar, mixing well. Add vanilla. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
3. Add flour/cocoa mixture in three separate additions, making sure all the flour is incorporated before adding more.Tip: start your mixer slowly! Cocoa powder flies everywhere. Hand mix in any nuts or chips.
4. Line a 8×8 baking dish with parchment paper, spray parchment with cooking spray. Using a spatula or knife, spread the batter evenly in the dish. Tap twice on counter to release air bubbles. Tip: It can be hard to get the batter even because it is thick, so after 10 minutes of cooking you can take the dish out and give it a little jiggle to even things out.
5. Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes (PLEASE NOTE: I’ve received a lot of comments that these brownies may come out like bricks. Start checking yours around 30 minutes, and proceed with caution), until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out with only a few crumbs. Tip: It’s ok if there are crumbs or batter on the toothpick! It means the brownies will be a little gooey and moist. With 3/4 cups butter, you’d have to bake them until they were bricks to get that toothpick clean.
6. Let cool for 20 minutes. Then, remove brownies from pan and let cool for at least one hour before cutting. If you can stand it.

This week I thought I would try something that I normally not like to eat brownies. I tried to make them from scratch but it seems that I may have overcooked them by a minute or two! I did double this recipe! I should have taken the out when I first thought they were done. I never realized how hard making brownies from scratch could be or even how messy! I thought I would make brownies for the teachers at the school I have been observing at but after trying them and seeing how dry they turned out to be I decided I would make them something another week. They did not taste bad at all, I actually liked the taste but what I did not like is how dry they were. It was almost like a cake and they got hard very quickly. This is a bit of a process. I need to melt butter and get it cooled before I could start making the batter for the brownies and that took almost an hour within itself. Once the butter was cooled I was able to start combining the ingredients. Once I started mixing in the dry ingredients, this is when it got messy. The cocoa powder really does fly everywhere! I think my counter, floor, sink and myself wore more than what was in the bowl. Be prepared this batter will be a very thick batter. It starts to get really hard to continue to mix with the hand beaters. After everything was mixed together and the batter was ready I poured the batter into the pans and stuck the pans into the oven. Honestly the brownies were only in my oven for 35 minutes so I would set the timer at 25 minutes and keep checking them from there. Hope if you try this recipe, you will have a better batch then I did!