Espresso Brownies

So one of John's best friends and his former roommate, Tara, went away to Alabama for the summer to work in a cafe one of her family members owns. There was a going away party for her, and John and I made these brownies, which we were going to make anyway, but now we had a reason.

This recipe is an adaptation from the recipe for "Brownies Cockaigne" in The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, which I recommend having if you like cooking, cause it is pretty much the classic cookbook.

Anyways, John and I made a total of 3 things during the course of this day, so we forgot to take a picture of the ingredients, but here's the list. Sorry for our lameness!

1 stick of butter
4 oz. unsweetened chocolate
1/4 tsp. salt
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup (sifted if you want) flour
2 tbsp. esspresso powder

First, preheat the oven to 350˚ F.

Start by melting the chocolate and butter. it'll look like this when it's done:
You can even see the beginnings of our guacamole here! But that's another post.

Anyway, let the chocolate cool for a while, or your brownies will be "heavy and dry" according to The Joy.

While this is cooling, get 4 eggs and the salt and put them in a mixing bowl, then beat until it's all foamy and a paler yellow, preferably with a mixer.



Then add the sugar, vanilla, and espresso powder gradually until the mixture's creamed.
I mixed these three things up beforehand cause I felt like it.




Ok, you can put the mixer away now. And add the cooled chocolate/butter mixture!


And mix it until just incorporated. Don't beat it to death, man.


Then, add the flour. Again, just incorporate it. Folding instead of stirring's a good idea too.


Batter's done! Now just spread it into a 9x13 pan that has foil at the bottom and is also greased on top of that. This picture also has the monkey bread John and I made with Allyson, John's other roommate. And it was also amazing.


Theeeeennnnn.... Bake for 25 minutes or until when you can stick a toothpick in it and it comes out clean. Wait until they're cool to cut them.

We later added a quick buttercream frosting that I totally made up on the spot. It melted due to the heat of so many people being in a tiny apartment when it's 85˚ out. It made me sad, but it tasted sooooo goooood. For you guys who may be following this recipe though, I reccomend either looking up another recipe for chocolate buttercream frosting and then add teaspoon or two of espresso powder. Or, if you're lame or have no time, get a chocolate frosting and add 1 or 2 teaspoons of espresso powder.

Another thing John and I did was make chocolate-covered coffee beans earlier in the week for a garnish. You could buy them, but they're easy to make. We actually made ours in clusters because we were too lazy to separate all the coffee beans individually. Still, they were delicious.

Our finished product turned out like this:


But after all the beer and liquor was cleared out of the fridge by the partygoers, we put them in the fridge and they were even more wonderful.