high-bar baking

I have a crippling nostalgia for the baked goods of my childhood. My best friend doesn’t get it; it’s some combination of not having that many baked goods in her childhood and… growing up. And I have grown. We know that. My growth manifested, though, as a desire to recreate everything I loved about what I ate back then without any of the drawbacks. 

That’s what this recipe is. Sarah absolutely nailed it. I have other favourite brownie recipes; Alvin’s 100 Hour Brownies are king of the hill, if you have 5 days and $30 worth of chocolate handy. If you don’t, Claire’s Forever Brownies are so, so good. But this recipe fills the niche that I’ve been pursuing for a long time. 

My mother’s favourite thing in the world is a brownie, preferably with ice cream on top. But not just any brownie, and I’ve tried. It has to be a boxed brownie. I love my mother, and she is a deeply supportive person, but every baked good I’ve ever made, and every brownie attempt I’ve brought her, she just says, “Oh, this is very nice! But you know what I’d really like…?” — Even she admitted these were good. (I’m not sure she admitted they were better, but I’m taking what I can get). 

But this isn’t just about her. I want a boxed brownie that tastes like food. I want that weird, fudgy, cakey, spongey-but-moist, cracked-top brownie texture that comes out of the box mix. But I didn’t want it to taste like, well, chemicals and nothing. This brownie tastes like chocolate, but not overwhelmingly so. It has to be true to the original, of course. It’s exactly what I want out of my dream of a boxed brownie: all the texture of my childhood, and all the flavour I’ve come to appreciate as I’ve grown up. 

I’m probably over-nostalgic as a person; I’m attached to Springsteen by Eric Church even though my teen years looked nothing like that. I fondly long for the things I never even had. And it was a very nostalgic weekend, having my best friends from college visit. Lovely backwards nostalgia, of course, but also forwards nostalgia, more of a “what if?” What if we had managed to live in the same city, and could jammy jam any night of the week? (This is a guitar-based, two-to-three-part harmony jam session in pajamas, for the uninitiated) What if these people were close enough to have fridge rights in my place whenever they wanted, not just every couple of years? We’ll never know, I suppose. But it can be pleasant to consider these things. 

As someone old and wise would say: You can’t have it all — where would you put it? So today we’ll settle for the good life that I do have. And brownies that can have it all. Cheers.