Earlier this week I made some egg-free chocolate brownies. Our chickens are laying eggs again, but they are eating them before I can collect them. So we were out of eggs, but I wanted to make some brownies. I decided to make my own recipe and so made brownies that were really healthy, but only tasted so-so. My husband wasn't really impressed. They had yogurt, a banana, maple syrup, and only a little sugar - really good stuff. But I think because they only had cocoa powder, no chocolate or chocolate chips, they were a little bland. However, my little babe didn't seem to mind.
Since we didn't have dessert yesterday on my birthday, I decided to make a non-healthy chocolate dessert for tonight. I found a brownie recipe in my trusty "Hershey's Classic Recipes" book and added some orange zest to it. Yum - totally full of sugar and chocolate chips - not a drop of maple syrup or honey in sight! My husband said, "These are good!" So if you need a daily dose of sugar, here it is.
Orange Chocolate Brownies
1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease a 9x13" pan. (You know what I recently realized? Instead of greasing your pan with olive or veggie oil, which is what I normally did, you can use the wrapper from your stick of butter to smear in the pan! Why did I not think of that before?! I have been so wasteful!)
2. In a small saucepan on medium heat, combine 1 stick of butter (1/2 cup) and 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips. When chocolate chips are melted, remove from heat.
3. Pour into a bowl and add the following: 1 1/2 cups of white sugar, 1 1/4 cups of flour, 3 eggs, 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Stir until smooth.
4. Add the zest of two oranges - use organic if possible.
5. Stir in 1 more cup of chocolate chips.
6. Pour into pan and bake for 30 minutes or until center is set. Do not over bake - brownies are better slightly underdone!
*You may notice that I do not use vanilla extract in any of my recipes. I do a lot of baking and it seems that every recipe calls for vanilla. Doesn't matter what it is - chocolate cake, sugar cookies, gingerbread - it all calls for vanilla in some insanely small amount. I decided that it is bogus bunk and decided to stop using it. I have more important things to spend my money on - vanilla extract isn't cheap! So if you are a faithful vanilla user, then please go ahead and add a teaspoon to these brownies.