Balking on Brownies

One of the first things I remember cooking as a child was brownies. They were always made from scratch. My job was to help with the stirring, and to lick the bowl.

As I grew older, I learned the secret to delicious, fudgy brownies was to just use enough flour to hold together the butter, eggs, and chocolate. Or at least that is how my mom used to make them.

But me? I don’t bake. And I’m afraid that recently I set my own kids down a slippery slope.

Yesterday Young Master Fussy’s school had a family picnic in the evening. The idea was that each family would bring dinner for themselves and a dessert to share.

You may find this hard to believe, but I’m not really a picnic kind of guy. I don’t like eating on the grass. I find sitting on the ground to be woefully uncomfortable. And I’m not crazy about balancing a plate on my lap.

Eating outdoors, standing in the shade of a taco truck? No problem. The differences are small, but they are meaningful.

My lead option for the picnic was having a pizza picnic. As it turned out, many of the other Princeton families had the same idea. I can’t recall ever seeing so many pizza boxes at a picnic before. But hey, people here lead busy lives.

However, earlier in the day, I was at Trader Joe’s with Little Miss Fussy. As the two of us were wandering the aisles, I confided to her that I had no idea what to bring to the picnic.

She wisely suggested, “What did you make for the last school picnic?”

I had made a mediterranean pasta salad of sorts. The details escaped me, but it probably involved some combination of olives, capers, garlic, feta and lemon zest. With what Trader Joe’s had at my disposal, I decided to do something similar but different. I swapped out the olives for sun dried tomatoes, the feta for goat cheese, and the lemon zest for toasted pine nuts. It was super easy and pretty damn good. The kids weren’t crazy about it. But Mrs. Fussy was a fan.

One question remained: what to do about dessert?

Dessert for the Fussy Little Children is usually a sad little thing that they dig out of their neverending stash of candy. Seriously, kids are given candy all the time. It’s amazing how their “candy drawer” never seems to ever run dry.

My first thought was rice crispy treats, because oh my god, are those easy. However, if Trader Joe’s had any marshmallows, I couldn’t find them. What they did have, in the place where I was expecting the marshmallow to be, was brownie mix.

Brownie mix always seemed like such a cop out.

But as easy to make as brownies are, I just didn’t have the time to make a batch of them. A little piece of me died as I picked up the box from the shelf to seriously consider the purchase and read the ingredients. It was Trader Joe’s Brownie Truffle Baking Mix. And the ingredient list was pretty simple:

Sugar, chocolate chips, unbleached enriched flour, cocoa, wheat starch, soybean oil, salt, and leavening.

It’s actually fewer ingredients than the sandwich bread I typically buy for Mrs. Fussy and the kids. And the instructions on the box called for adding a stick of butter and two eggs.

Confession number two: in theory I could have melted the butter in a saucepan on the stovetop. However, I did it in the microwave that came with our current apartment. I don’t believe in microwaves and have refused to let one into our house. But like I said, I was pretty pushed for time.

In fact, I was so pushed for time that I gave up much that I hold dear in order to produce this facsimile of brownies in time for the picnic.

You know what I think might be the worst part?

They were pretty darn good. I’m far from an expert in this. But I think the trick was twofold. I used jumbo eggs instead of large ones. And I made sure to take the brownies out on the early side, so they would still be a little soft and gooey in the center.

I kind of wish these were awful so I would never be tempted to buy them again. Dammit. Foiled once again by Trader Joe’s and the trials of everyday life.