Banana Bread & The Cookies of Appeasement

Once again, our freezer suffered from a surfeit of bananas. Its salvation? Money Saving Mom's tempting "Freezer-Friendly Chocolate Banana Bread" (subbed peanut butter chips for chocolate). I don't know that this bread actually freezes well as it's going straight to work and into hungry librarian bellies, but it looks and smells fabulous. Indeed, its heady perfume made me feel a bit drunk after a while and I had to remove the loaf to a cupboard while I baked The Husband's Cookies of Appeasement.

My co-worker's could not get enough of this bread!

I'd already baked The Husband a beautiful almond bundt cake earlier this week (with homemade raspberry sauce even!), but he was still clearly displeased to come downstairs this morning and discover the delicious baking smells that had finally roused him from his snug nest were not for him. Oh, the betrayal in his eyes! And the scorn he heaped upon my poor, innocent banana bread.

Tender almond sponge with raspberry sauce, yum!

So I baked him cookies -- Betty Crocker's "Black Beauties" -- which allowed me to use up the bag of Betty Crocker double chocolate chunk cookie mix leftover from a work event, so yay for that. The cookies came out well, even though I omitted the nuts (meant to replace them with chopped hazelnuts but forgot) and did not dip the baked cookies in melted chocolate (clearly, I do not love my husband that much). They were best the first few hours out of the oven, when biting down on their crisp exteriors released warm, gooey chocolate centers. I suspect that tomorrow they'll just be a bit chewy and The Husband will lose a little of his ardor for them.

Can't go wrong with a warm cookie

Oh, fickle Eater of Cookies!

Christmas Time is Cookie Time

So, like everyone else, I've been baking cookies. Nothing fancy this year, because I don't have the motivation or drive for fancy, but I yearn for the comfort of cookies. The sheer homeyness of cookies.

The first batch I made, "Spumoni Chunk Cookies," used a recipe I found on bettycrocker.com. The cookies, which used Betty Crocker's sugar cookie mix as a base, were chock full of dried cherries, dry-roasted salted nuts, and white and semisweet chocolate chips. I admit my cookies don't look quite as pretty as the ones on the website, but they still tasted pretty darn fine and my coworkers scarfed them down as if they were manna or ambrosia.

Knowing The Husband would not touch the spumoni cookies with a ten-foot pole, I made him a batch of Crisco's "Ultimate Double Chocolate Chip Cookies" using white chocolate and semisweet chocolate chips. He seemed pleased with them, but said they were best still warm from the oven. Warming them the next day in the microwave worked okay, but nothing is beats cookies fresh from the oven.

Imperfectly Delicious Oreo Cheesecake Pudding Bites

August's Crazy Cooking Challenge is cheesecake and straight away I knew I would need a recipe for a bite-size no-bake cheesecake, because ... August. August is not for baking nor is it for heavy food like cheesecake.

Happily, I found a recipe at Cooking Classy for no-bake "Oreo Cheesecake Bites" that looked like it would be perfect for the challenge. We like Oreos. We love cheesecake. We adore bite-size nibbles.

So cute!

Unfortunately, I immediately ran into a big problem -- none of the grocery stores near me sold 3.4 oz packages of cheesecake flavored instant pudding mix. The closest thing I could find was 1 oz Jell-O brand sugar-free instant cheesecake pudding mix at Target.

I decided to give it a go but fudge the amount of liquid, because I worried that using the smaller box would mean a soupier filling if I used the original amounts of liquid. So, instead of 1 cup heavy cream and ¾ cup milk, I used 1 cup heavy cream and ¼ (1%) milk. This sounds logical, doesn't it? Well, it didn't work. My cheesecake filling was still very pudding like and leaving it in the freezer for 20 minutes (instead of 10) didn't noticeably improve it.

Mind you, it still tasted very good -- gooey Oreo cheesecake filling cannot taste bad as it contains both Oreos and cheesecake and those things are never bad -- and we were happy enough to eat the bites, imperfect as they might be.

Because the recipe made 30 and there are only 2 of us, I made 6 bites and stored the rest of the filling in my frosting gun in the freezer so that 1) the filling would hopefully set-up more as time went on and 2) we could make more bites whenever we pleased. If the filling doesn't set up more overnight, I'll just make cheesecake parfaits by layering the gooey filling with crushed Oreos and whipped cream.

Eek! Two days left to find another cheesecake recipe! To the library!

Improv Challenge: Peanut Butter & Jelly

When the two ingredients for this month's Improv Challenge at Frugal Antics of a Harried Homemaker were revealed, I was excited because I had been meaning to make "Peanut Butter and Port Thumbprints" from The Boozy Baker (Running Press, 2010) for many months now. Nut butter, jam, and port all in a cookie? What could be better? Of course, stuff happened and the next thing I knew it was two days before the Improv Challenge and I still hadn't baked those darn cookies! And that is how I found myself baking cookies (and taking pics) when I should have been in bed.

The recipe was pretty straight forward -- bog standard peanut butter cookie recipe plus jam mixed with port. Measure out the dough, roll it into balls, poke a well in it, etc. I used my tablespoon cookie scoop to make sure I ended up with uniformly-sized cookies, but I only managed 15 cookies to a sheet so that was 30 cookies overall, instead of the recipe's 32.

I used the bowl of ½ teaspoon to make the wells and pressed it in deep hoping that would help keep the seedless black raspberry jam in place. And the jam did stay in place ... it's the cookie dough that oozed everywhere.

My cookies came out a bit wonky-looking and I expect that's because I substituted "natural" cashew butter for the peanut butter. The cashew butter lacked the stabilizers I would have found in "normal" peanut butter like Jif and so the cookies kind-of spread all over the place as they baked. Mind you, they tasted really fab -- nutty, crispy, sweet, and jammy. They just look so homely.

I do want to make this cookies again with crunchy Jif to see if they hold their shape better. If they do, I'll make them with blueberry jam and blueberry port for my dad's birthday. I have many memories of my dad sitting on the couch after supper, spreading Townhouse crackers with crunchy Jif, then making a little well in the peanut butter and filling it with jam. Blueberry jam was his favorite, but he's make me raspberry ones. All the jams were made by Mom, of course, but I think Dad will be happy enough with Stonewall Kitchen's "Wild Maine Blueberry Jam" in his cookies as I lack the jam-making skillz.

Soft Cookies, Warm Cookies, Nom, Nom, Nom

In a fit of madness (or was it optimism?) I promised The Husband cookies on a weekend already packed with cooking. I knew I'd need a very basic no-frills recipe that would still be up to The Husband's high standards. After a very brief ohmygodshowmethebestreciperightnow Google search, I settled on a modified version of SheKnows's "Cranberry Chip Cookies."

I used 1 cup Nestle semi-sweet mini morsels, 1 cup Whole Foods 365 Everyday Value white chocolate chunks, and 1 cup Whole Foods 365 Everyday Value dried sweetened raspberries. I also used 1 teaspoon Cook's Pure Red Raspberry Extract instead of the vanilla to give the cookies extra raspberry power and skipped the nuts as I thought there was enough going on in these cookies without them.

These cookies were, we both agree, best eaten warm. Warm, they were soft with slightly melty chocolate and plump, almost gooey raspberries. At room temperature they were pretty fair crisp chocolate chip cookies, but the dried raspberries had resumed their regular raisin-like texture. The Husband does not like raisins or anything that resembles raisins texturally and his cookie consumption sloooooowed right down.

So it was high, ho, off to work the cookies go! And my coworkers seemed perfectly happy to scarf them up. There cookies hit the staff room at 8:20 and, at 10:15, there was nothing left but crumbs. I think there's nothing librarians like more on a Monday morning than free cookies in the staff room. Unless, it's free cake ...

Good-bye, Mix! Hello, Brownies!

Oh, the shame! The embarrassment! The ... thrift? Last weekend, faced with a Hershey's Baking Bar that was best by September 2010 and that I couldn't bear to throw out because it looked (and tasted) perfectly fine, I whipped up a pan of Hershey's "Quick and Easy Fudgey Brownies." I made the cake-like variation with ½ cup milk and 1½ cups flour, because I intended to serve these brownies with fresh raspberries and whipped cream and cake-like brownies seemed better suited to that pairing than gooey ones.

Definitely recommend this recipe if you're trying to get away from mixes, but still want fast, no fuss brownies. This was an extremely easy recipe anyone could make and it couldn't have taken more than 10 minutes to throw together. It made 24 cake-like brownies, which is far more than I get from most mixes.

Cleaning out the cupboards with ... cookies!

Just like soup, cookies are an excellent way to use up a bunch of odds-and-ends. Last week, faced with multiple open bags of chocolate baking bits, I made a batch of Crisco's "Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies" and there was much rejoicing from The Husband who still thinks that he isn't getting enough cookies. Sir, I have now baked five kinds of cookies since New Year's! That is exponentially more cookie-baking than ever before.

Anyway, to make these cookies I used a combination of Nestle semi-sweet mini morsels, Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate chips, and Whole Foods 365 Everyday Value white chocolate chunks. The total amount of chocolate was the same as what the recipe called for -- just broken down along different lines. It would have been just as easy to sub in butterscotch chips (had any remained from the Scotchie Experiment) or walnuts. I don't recommend adding more chocolate than the recipe calls for unless you want chocolate studded with cookie instead of cookie studded with chocolate.

These were pretty good cookies -- crisp on the outside, tender in the middle, and (surprisingly) very chocolaty without being very sweet. Were they the "ultimate" chocolate chip cookies? While they were an order of magnitude better than Chips Ahoy, they're can't hold a candle to the Jacques Torres French Kiss Cookies I made in July ... big, buttery, bittersweet, yum!

I still have a ridiculous amount of baking chocolate left on hand:

• Hershey's unsweetened baking bar
• Baker's semi-sweet baking chocolate squares
• Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate chips (partial)
• Nestle semi-sweet mini morsels (partial)
• Nestle semi-sweet chunks

Bake moar cookies?

Oatmeal Scotchies -- I Blame Netflix

Ever since Netflix sent us the first season of Warehouse 13 a couple weeks ago, I've been jonesing for oatmeal scotchies. While they're referenced very briefly in the pilot episode, that was just enough to trigger a very persistent craving for what was once a favorite cookie I used to buy, still warm, during my mad, bad college days. Oh, oatmeal scotchies, I didn't even realize I missed you, but now you're all I want to bake.

So (obviously) I baked some! I used Nestle's recipe for "Oatmeal Scotchies" (recipe is on the back of the butterscotch morsels' bag) and, woo, these were tasty cookies. Crispy on the outside with chewy centers and lots of delicious butterscotch bits.

This recipe is supposed to make 48 cookies, but I was a bit heavy-handed with my cookie scoop and only managed 35 large cookies -- of which I took half to work and kept the other half for us. This turned out to be an error on my part as The Husband and I could definitely have used more cookies at home. Cookies, om nom nom!

(My co-workers really enjoyed the cookies and certainly didn't think I brought them too many!)

Cookies, I Baked Them

I had promised The Husband cookies over the long weekend, but ended up using the last of the all-purpose flour in Sunday's silver dollar pancakes. I considered going to the store for flour, but in the spirit of the pantry challenge, it seemed a bit lazy to go buy flour when I had a mostly-full bin of King Arthur Organic White Whole Wheat Flour on hand. Surely I could make cookies with it? I use white whole wheat in roux, cakes, brownies, and quick breads so why not cookies? But could I find a recipe The Husband would like?

Happily, I found a Betty Crocker recipe for "No-Roll Sugar Cookies" which used white whole wheat flour. Since sugar cookies are the most basic, bog standard cookies I figured there was nothing about them The Husband would find displeasing and gave the recipe a go.

And, you know, these turned out to be really lovely cookies -- crisp on the outside, tender on the inside, and richly perfumed with the heady scent of Penzeys Mexican Vanilla. I'm encouraged to try white whole wheat flour in more cookie recipes!

cookies and milk after lunch

I brought Better Homes and Gardens' Very Merry Cookies (Wiley, 2011) home from the library last week and told The Husband to pick out a couple cookie recipes he liked. Ten minutes (and one chapter) later, the book was studded with sticky notes. Among others, The Husband desired "White Chocolate and Raspberry Cookies," "Mini Raspberry and White Chocolate Whoopie Pies," "Strawberry Cheesecake Tartlets," and "Raspberry Cookie Sandwiches." While they all looked delicious, I thought I should start with the simplest recipe -- the one for "White Chocolate and Raspberry Cookies."

Maybe it's because it's been a while since I ate a cookie, but these were really good cookies. And so easy to make! I will definitely be making them again -- perhaps next week? Or is that too soon?

Ingredients: white chocolate morsels, unsalted butter, sugar, baking soda, salt, all-purpose flour, seedless raspberry jam, shortening, red raspberry extract.

The recipe doesn't actually call for red raspberry extract, but I thought a cap full couldn't hurt (and it didn't). Also, the recipe says not to fill and decorate these cookies in advance but to wait until you were going to serve them. I don't know why it says that as I filled and decorated mine as soon as they had cooled and they kept fine for a week in snap/lock container. The trick seemed to be to poke little wells in the cookies' middles as they came out of the oven to hold the melty jam in. I didn't have this brilliant idea until my second cookie sheet came out of the oven, so some of my cookies didn't get wells and I didn't fill them with jam -- just drizzled the white chocolate over them and called them good enough. And they were.

Anyway, the wells keep the jam from running about and, once everything is properly cooled, the chocolate hardens up and there's no reason you can't store these cookies all filled and ready to go. They don't stick to each other. They don't ooze. They just sit in the container and say "Eat me! I'm delicious!"

A Mix A Week: Stonewall Kitchen Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

I'm a little behind with my Mix A Week Challenge so I went a little overboard to compensate and made both boxes of Stonewall Kitchen's Chocolate Sandwich Cookie mix this past weekend. Having made the Vanilla Sandwich Cookie mix last month, I felt I'd had enough practice that I was unlikely to ruin a double batch. And, you know, I did pretty good. Almost creamed an egg shell with the butter (don't ask) and burnt my left hand twice, but those were small troubles.

Remembering the domed vanilla sandwich cookies, I smooshed the chocolate ones down much more firmly and the chocolate ones came out pretty flat. Sometimes, going all "Hulk smash!" is a good thing?

The mix says it makes twenty-four sandwich cookies per box, but I only managed twenty. This is perfectly okay with me as I don't really want a lot of cookies hanging around my kitchen -- half of them went to work with me, anyway, and were all eaten up by the end of the day. Several people asked me for the recipe and I happily pointed them at the Stonewall Kitchen website ... only to find out Stonewall Kitchen doesn't sell this mix, anymore.

Seven mixes down, ten to go!

A Mix A Week: Stonewall Kitchen Vanilla Sandwich Cookies

I let The Husband pick this week's mix for my Mix A Week Challenge and, surprisingly, he went with Stonewall Kitchen's Vanilla Sandwich Cookie mix. Given his great appreciation of last week's red velvet whoopie pies, I thought for sure he'd pick a box of Stonewall Kitchen's Peppermint Whoopie Pie mix, but no, he wanted cookies.

And it was a good choice! This mix made some pretty great cookies -- but then when wouldn't sugar cookies sandwiched together with chocolate buttercream frosting taste good?

My cookies came out more domed than I would have liked, but that was probably because I mashed the dough scoops down to gingerly. The instructions said to press them down gently, and next time (with the chocolate sandwich cookie mix) I will just go all "Hulk smash!" on their doughy little heads to get later cookies.

The mix says it makes twenty sandwich cookies, but I only managed to get fifteen out of it and The Husband has already nommed up three. I guess I will need to hide a few, if I want a share!

Five mixes down, twelve to go!

A Mix A Week: Stonewall Kitchen Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

This weekend, in keeping with my Mix A Week challenge, I made a batch of Stonewall Kitchen's Red Velvet Whoopie Pie mix. Whoopie pies and red velvet everything were incredibly trendy last year and I'm guessing Stonewall Kitchen thought to cash in on two trends with one mix. Certainly, I remember snatching up a box of the mix as soon as I walked into the shop.

Is it a cake mix? Is it prettily packaged in Stonewall Kitchen bling? Is it on sale? I will purchase it and bring it home. Then I will shove it in a cupboard and ignore it for six months. Oh, Stonewall Kitchen, I wish I knew how to quit you!

Other than by developing a terrible food allergy.

The mix was extremely simple to prepare and assemble. It probably took five minutes to make the batter, once the butter was softened, and only ten minutes for the cakes to bake. Yes, they did have to cool for about half an hour before I could fill and assemble them, but that gave me plenty of time to make the filling and do the washing up.

I liked these whoopie pies pretty well. While filled with the anathema that is vanilla butter cream frosting ("true" whoopie pie has a marshmallowy frosting, imho), they were very light and flavorful in an inverted-cupcake way. I was also really pleased with how precisely the recipe worked out -- it really did make twenty-four cakes and enough filling to make exactly twelve whoopie pies. I thought, with my skills, I would surely end up with half an unfilled whoopie pie!

The Husband said that, while these whoopie pies didn't taste that chocolaty, he would be happy to eat a lot of them. Indeed, he went on to say he could eat a lot of them every day -- although that might get a bit samey, so I should probably mix them up with another kind of whoopie pie! Oh, The Husband, he is so lucky I have two boxes of Stonewall Kitchen's Peppermint Whoopie Pie mix waiting to be made up.

Four mixes down, thirteen to go!

A Mix A Week: Jacques Torres Chocolate French Kiss Cookies

We bought a box of Jacques Torres Chocolate French Kiss cookie mix when we were up at King Arthur Flour about eight months ago. I don't know why I hadn't baked this mix up before now -- I've made it before and it bakes up some of the yummiest chocolate chip cookies ever! I know you think that's mere hyperbole, but these are good cookies. If you can get your hands on a box of this mix, buy it and make these cookies. Big, buttery, bittersweet -- what's not to like?

(Anyway, I think this cookie mix just ended up trapped behind other mixes and I forgot about it. Embarrassing, but true and further proof I need less baking stuff cluttering up my cupboards!)

Jacques Torres Chocolate French Kiss Cookie mix is an incredibly easy mix to put together. All you need is a softened stick of butter and an egg. Once the butter is softened (which is my least favorite part of baking because I always either forget I need to soften butter and set my baking plans back a couple hours or I remember to take the butter out of the freezer and then completely forget about it while I read a book all afternoon) it takes very little time to throw the dough together. Ten minutes (at most) from greasing the first baking sheet to popping that cookie-laden sheet in the oven.

Each bittersweet Belgian chocolate disk is the size of a quarter, I kid you not.
These are MOFO big cookies.

The cookies have to be cooled completely before they can be removed from the baking sheet and, if you want to eat cookies rightnowthisminute that can be a bit of a bugger. Happily, the whole baking sheet can be popped in the fridge for ten minutes to speed the cooling process along. I know, the food safety people say you shouldn't put hot things in your fridge because it raises the overall temperature of your fridge and may help nasty things grow in your food, but cooling the cookies in the fridge really worked. They weren't cold, but were certainly cool enough to remove from the tray and eat. Mmm. Cookies!

These cookies bake up pretty big so they're actually perfect for sharing, because you can't eat more than one at a sitting, anyway, so you might as well share them 'round with your friends and deserving coworkers. Also, individually wrapped in pretty cellophane bags with curling ribbons, they'd make easy event favors or sweet bribes for teachers, etc.

That's three mixes down, fourteen more to go!

A Mix A Week: Stonewall Kitchen White Mountain Chocolate Chip Cookies

Of all the baking mixes I own, Stonewall Kitchen's White Mountain Chocolate Chip Cookie mix requires the fewest extra ingredients and the least effort. Just add softened butter and egg to the mix, follow the instructions, and you will end up with delicious cookies in less than thirty minutes (excluding butter-softening time, of course).

The mix comes in two packets -- one of delicious vanilla-scented baking mix and the other of white, semisweet, and milk chocolate chunks.  Look at those chunks! Don't you just want to nom them up?

To make these cookies, just beat one cup of baking mix into the softened butter, add the egg and remaining mix, and beat until well incorporated. Stir in chocolate chunks. Drop tablespoons of dough onto a greased cookie sheet and bake. Shazam, you have cookies!

Now, this recipe is supposed to make fourteen cookies. This created a problem for me as fourteen balls of cookies could not be evenly distributed across my cookie sheet. So I made twelve cookies and baked them for seventeen minutes instead of fifteen.

How were the cookies? The cookies were delicious. Vanilla-y, chocolate-y, soft, and chewy ... they tasted pretty darn homemade.

One mix down, sixteen more to go.

Birthday Cookies

My Dad likes root beer (once upon a time, he even worked at an A&W root beer stand) and I wanted to bake something root beer-y for his birthday, but that's not a flavor I often come across in cookbooks and I was kind-of stuck as to what to make. Happily, the Internet is full of recipes and I ended up baking up a lovely batch of cookies using Cook's recipe for "Root Beer White Chocolate Chip Cookies."

The root beer flavor wasn't very strong (Penzey's Mexican vanilla might have been too strong for this recipe), but there was definite whiff of root beer about them and the overall texture and spicy-sweet flavor combination was very pleasing.

Still, if I were to make these again, I might use 3 teaspoons of root beer extract and omit the vanilla altogether for a stronger root beer taste (Cook's root beer extract is made with bourbon vanilla extract, anyway).

Peanut Butter Chocolate Love

Last week, I was wandering through Betty Crocker's flickr sets when I saw this photo and thought they were just the most adorable cookies ever:


Since I had a whole bag of dark chocolate hearts leftover from Valentine's Day and was in the mood to bake something, I made a batch. Mine aren't as pretty as Betty's, but they still went over a treat with the other librarians and The Husband (being a good wife, I made his with milk chocolate squares).


Chocolate kiss peanut butter cookies were one of the cookies my mother always made at Christmas. When I was very little, she let me unwrap the kisses and press them into the warm cookies. Later, they were one of the first cookies I was allowed to make "all on my own." I still have a certain nostalgia for them even though I almost never think of baking them!

(Note to self: buy some coarse or sparkling sugar for prettier cookies)

Cookies Are Always In Season

Friday, even though it was a muggy 86°F outside, I had a terrible craving for warm chocolate chip cookies. Rather than fight my craving and eat something "sensible" like a nice cup of low fat yogurt, I gave in and made these easy chocolate chip bars using Crisco's "Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies" recipe.

The dough came together very quickly and smoothly since it used vegetable shortening instead of softened butter -- no waiting -- and  my stand mixer did all the hard labor. I just leaned against the counter and measured ingredients out.  Of course, there was a little blip of almost-disaster when I dropped a silicone spatula into the running mixer, but I  managed to power the mixer off before it ate the spatula.  A little ruffled, I then proceeded to open the chip bag a bit too enthusiastically and scattered chips all over the floor.  Husband swept them up for me and I had an extra bag in the cupboard, so it was not as terrible as it could have been.

After all that excitement, it seemed as if bar cookies would be safer than drop cookies -- I was already pretty tired -- so I spread the dough in a greased 13x9 pan. And at first I thought I was doing it wrong as the dough was really thick and hard to spread, but it spread more easily once I switched over to my small offset spatula. Oh, small offset spatula, I ♥ you!

The Husband took the bars out of the oven so I wouldn't burn myself (or drop them and waste the precious, precious cookies) and portioned them out once they had cooled so I couldn't cut myself (and bleed on 'em).

The bars were quite delicious with a slightly crisp outside and a soft, chewy inside. While not the most awesome chocolate chips cookies I've ever made (need butter for that), they are certainly well worth making again.

The whole time I was making these bars, "C is for Cookie" was running through my head:

Back-to-Baking Brownies

Today, I thought I might try baking some brownies.  I knew there were open bags of chocolate morsels and King Arthur Flour's basic brownie mix in the bottom baking cupboard and that all I needed to turn the mix into brownies were eggs, water, and melted butter -- all ingredients which should be grabbable from the wheelchair. Luckily, my medium mixing bowl was drying in the sink drain so I did not need any help getting to that, either.

Mind you, it still took me a good half hour to prepare the batter! And, of course, I managed to get brownie mix all over myself and the counter and misplaced a measuring cup in the process. Was it worth the mess? Yes! The brownies were excellent. Last time I used this mix, I made the super-rich and chocolaty fudge-y version. This time, I made the cake version which was all fluffy and tender and nomnomnom.

I know brownies are no big deal, baking-wise, but I baked these from my wheelchair and they are the first thing I have baked since the blueberry bread goodness of March 21. Baking these brownies helped me feel capable and gave my self worth a little boost.  While the list of things I can't do right now is pretty long, it's one item shorter than it was this morning.

Gud Brownie

I thought I would be a good wife and bake The Husband some brownies. Loving, but also lazy, I turned to my bulk bag of King Arthur Flour's Basic Brownie Mix. I made the fudgy version and, woo-boy, are they fudgy! So rich and chocolaty that, for once, it's easy to be satisfied with just one brownie.

We have eaten our brownies plain, with satsumas, and sundae-ized with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. They were good all ways and are nearly gone, now. Happily, the bag should make two more batches -- although I have my doubts as there doesn't seem like seven more cups of mix in the bag. However, I shall just fluff the heck out of it (the directions do say to fluff the mix) and hope for the best!

Will I buy this mix again? Yes. While, at $12.95 for three batches, I'm not sure this mix is entirely economical, the quality and convenience can't be beat.