Brownie Baking Contest

Last week, we had a brownie baking contest at work. I was originally going to bake some box brownies and enter them, but having won the chocolate chip cookie contest, I thought I should put some more effort into it and bake a batch from scratch. I consulted my friend Laurel, who's a master baker, for a good brownie recipe. She too finds scratch brownies too much of a bother and usually uses a mix, but she recommended the Alton Brown recipe if I was going to the trouble. I came home from bowling Monday night pretty tired and the kitchen was messy, but I decided to use the one square foot of counter space available and bake these brownies. Unfortunately, it wasn't until after I'd mixed in all the ingredients that I realized that I'd used a 1/3 measure thinking it was 1/4 and had also used a 1/2 measure mistakenly as well. I felt pretty darned frustrated at this point since all the cocoa powder sifting had left my kitchen even more messy, but I stuck them in the oven and baked them anyways. They turned out pretty good, I added a dash of mint to the recipe and entered them at work. I didn't win, but I came in 2nd which is good because I was dreading having to confess to my inability to measure dry ingredients. As you faithful blog readers may remember, this is a problem I've encountered before when I've used inaccurate amounts of butter in my baking. That said, brownies are very forgiving and taste good even when you aren't quite so accurate.