Meredith's Test Kitchen

A few months ago I decided to try making Brownie Cups - brownies as cup cakes - in hopes of avoiding the crispy edges and having only yummy soft brownies. I tried spraying the cup cake pan with baking spray rather than using the paper cups. Disaster. The brownies stuck to the sides and I had to pry them out with a knife, destroying the brownies and scratching my cup cake pans (don't worry, they aren't expensive pans).

Last week I tried again, but this time I made mini cup cakes and used the paper liners. This seemed to work great. I didn't taste them, because I used a milk chocolate brownie mix (yes, I said mix, I've never found a recipe that makes a brownie I like better than the mix), and milk chocolate brownies are just wrong. But they did come out of the papers easily enough.

Next I tried full size cup cakes. I was unsure of how long to cook them, and ended up giving them too much time in the oven. I held the kids off long enough to let the brownie cups cool completely, but then disaster struck again. The papers would not come off. I had to pick and peel and was not able to salvage some of them. Conclusion - you can't let them cool completely, but try to peel the papers too soon and half the brownie sticks to the paper.

I tried again yesterday, thinking I had all the kinks worked out, but I got distracted while making them and swapped the measurements for the oil and water (and very nearly added an extra egg), which made enough of a difference to make the experience useless in terms of learning anything new.

Now I am out of brownie mix. Further experimentation will have to wait until I can get to the store.

And I'm sure you are dying to know why I need to perfect these Brownie Cups. No reason, really, other than to prove that I can. Now if I could show this sort of dedication to fixing dinner.