high-bar baking

Allow me to draw a bunch of hopelessly contrived metaphors. (Audience: What else do you do?) 

These are THE brownies. I adore Claire’s Forever Brownies, and the Preppy Kitchen ones will always have a special place in my heart for opening my eyes to what brownies could be. Sarah’s Classics are as boxed-classic as you can get. But these are nothing short of perfection. Browned butter, thirty bucks worth of chocolate, five days in the making. There are term papers for which I’ve put forth less time and effort. 

They’re also the brownies that I like to bring when I travel, even when I’m not going with a group remotely large enough to warrant them (note to self, plan better next time. Bring containers with which to distribute them). They last forever, as evidenced by how much I enjoyed one minutes ago, almost a week after baking and well after my return flight touched down in SLC. 

Lots of prep goes into them. Much like the amount of prep that goes into the football season. The team’s been at it for far longer than five days, of course, but I told you the comparison would be contrived. And unlike brownies, that prep for my Irish does not always pay off. Especially when I travel to see them. We have trouble with the big games. We have trouble with many things. These things sadly do not include having trouble breaking my heart and the heart of every Notre Dame fan with a pulse. 

But not this week. Not today. 

Today the prep paid off. Today the right cooks were in the kitchen. The thirty dollars (~7.1 million?) were worth it. We went into a place we had no business silencing and silenced it. Kyle Field was phenomenal. For one night, we were better. 

In the words of Fredrick Backman, “How many chances do we get to love something that’s almost pointless entirely unconditionally?”