Chocolate Nutty Brownies: There goes the neighborhood

To SWC, HJL, JEL, GC, EK, CY - Radio Fryer is the best band ever!

Husband and I really do enjoy entertaining at home.  We do it at least once a month, whether it is hosting our house church or just inviting a few friends over, but we do enjoy the presence of our close friends in our home, relaxing, eating and having a good time.  One of the major drawbacks for our home is that we have no cable TV, no large big screen and no fancy video games or electronics to entice people to come.   What we lack in electronics and whatnot, we make up for in other ways.

This past week, Husband was craving the Asian Fried Wings, and so I promised that I'd make them for him.  My general rule about deep frying is this - if I'm going to deep fry - then I make sure there are a lot of people to enjoy the effort and the whole experience.  I asked if he might want to have some folks over and we decided on our close friends of over 15 years and gathered them in our home.  I fried 120 wings and seven adults and five children consumed 91 wings.  It was lots of fun with lots of just relaxing and talking when suddenly, somehow we decided that we must all play the instruments.  In our home we have a very nice drum set (because I'm borrowing them from a friend to learn on), a piano, and a guitar.  Strangely enough, within this group of friends, three of us used to be on our church praise team together - in the mix we had our drummer, lead vocalist and pianist/keyboardist (me!).  We sat down and began playing songs from over 15 years ago, just enjoying the music.  Husband got out the guitar and began playing along and soon it was musical madness... all totally fun.

At one point, someone decided (it might have been me) that we should all move to our non-dominant instrument - I moved to the drums, the drummer EK moved to the guitar, the vocalist JEL moved to the piano and Husband and JEL's husband (both who were never officially praise team members but high-level groupies) became the lead vocalists.  It was funny and a lot less smooth than the former configuration and as we pounded out songs later into the night, Husband said, "There goes the neighborhood."  I immediately became concerned and told him to go outside and see how much he could hear outside our home and he complied. I had visions of the cops coming to our house, telling us to turn off the racket and possibly arresting me for disturbing the peace (after all, I was the one pounding out erratic rhythms on the drums.)  As it turned out, from the outside, as the windows were closed, very little could be heard, and we relaxed and continued playing songs like crazy.  I even shocked Husband with some slightly skillful drum playing (and when I mean slightly skillful, I mean ever so slightly skillful.) 

At the end of the night, as Husband and I cleared up the detritus from our impromptu fried chicken jam session, I turned to him and said, "There is nothing like spending time with the people who know us best."  He agreed and we had a brief moment discussing how blessed we were with great friends who knew us before we ever really knew ourselves.  We both drew such comfort and joy from those long standing relationships that have stood the test of time.

Which brings me to the Chocolate Nutty Brownies.  A brownie is one of those classic desserts, that you've known for a long time and really has stood the test of time.  There are basic recipes (I happen to really like the one that is on the back of the Baker's unsweetened chocolate box) to more complex and complicated ones which ask you to beat eggs with sugar for an extended period of time.  But whatever the recipe, the feeling is always the same - a brownie is a cookie/cake/dessert that feels familiar and comforting all at the same time.

I decided to modify an Ina Garten recipe and make some brownies to celebrate a birthday and to have fun with my church small group.  These are very chocolately, and less on the gooey side and more on the cakey side.  I like the structure of these more than a very ooey gooey brownie, so if you're looking for THAT - this is not the recipe.  This makes an obnoxious amount of brownies, so be prepared to share, giveaway, pack up, and freeze these lest you eat them all and attempt to sue me.  (Sue INA!)

Chocolate Nutty Brownies
adapted from recipe by Ina Garten
Makes 40 good sized pieces (or 20 very large ones)

Ingredients
2 sticks of butter (1/2 lb)
18 ounces of semi sweet chocolate chips (equivalent to 3 cups - 2 cups to be melted, 1 cup to be mixed in)
6 ounces unsweetened chocolate
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped (1 Ghiradelli bar is 4 oz)
6 extra-large eggs
¼ cup freshly brewed strong coffee
2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract
2 ¼ cups sugar
1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour (¼ cup of this flour will be tossed with pecans and the chips)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups chopped pecans
6 ounces white chocolate chips (1 cup equivalent)

Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour (or line with parchment and grease heavily) a 12 x 18 x 1-inch baking sheet (or what they call a half baking sheet).

Melt together the butter, 2 cups of chocolate chips, the unsweetened chocolate and bittersweet chocolate in a medium bowl over simmering water. Allow to cool slightly. In a large bowl, stir (do not beat) together the eggs, coffee, vanilla, and sugar. Stir the warm chocolate mixture into the egg mixture and allow to cool to room temperature.

 

 

In a medium bowl, sift together 1 cup of flour, the baking powder, and salt. Add to the cooled chocolate mixture. Toss the pecans, 6 ounces of chocolate chips, and 6 ounces of white chocolate chips in a medium bowl with ¼ cup of flour. (I smash my nuts in a heavy plastic ziploc bag with a heavy pan or measuring cup and then just added the chocolate and the flour into the bag and shook it all together.)

Add nut chocolate mixture to the chocolate batter.  Pour into the baking sheet.

 

Bake for 20 minutes, then rap the baking sheet against the oven shelf to force the air to escape from between the pan and the brownie dough. Bake for about 15 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Do not overbake! Allow to cool thoroughly, refrigerate, and cut into 40 large squares.

Printable recipe

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