Kate’s Brownies

Someone recently asked me for a good brownie recipe knowing how much I like to bake.  Surprisingly I rarely make brownies and didn’t have a good suggestion.  Maybe I made too many box brownies for my dad as a kid???  I find baking cakes and cookies more exciting.  You can do a lot more variations with those.  My co-worker gave me this recipe saying it was her go-to so I gave it a try.  There is a lot of batter here and made quite the volume of brownies!  They were quite good and I’d say they were a cake-like brownie with all the eggs.  I had never cooked with Cardamom before and strangely I thought it gave it almost a mint flavor which I really enjoyed.  This recipe can be pretty versatile you could vary the amount of cream cheese you use with sour cream or buttermilk to get some different densities.

Difficulty: Easy
Prep Time: 30 min
Cook Time: 40-50 min
Total Time: 1 hour 20 min
Yield: 20
Taste: Good

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 cup butter
8 oz cream cheese
1 1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
3 tbs vanilla
5 eggs
2 1/2 all purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa (recommend Guittard or Scharffenberger not Hershey’s)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp Cardamom

Optional:
1 1/2- 2 cups chopped toasted nuts (pecans, macadamia, glazed almonds, or mixed)
1/2 – 1 large bag coconut
1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips (Guittard, Valrhona or Scharffenberger’s)

PROCEDURE:

1) Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease a 9×13-inch cake pan.

2) Cream together butter, cream cheese, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla

3) Add one egg at a time and mix after each addition

4) In a separate large bowl mix together all purpose flour, Cocoa, salt, baking powder, Cardamom
Stir to blend.

5) Add 1/2 cup at a time of dry mixture to creamed mixture stirring after each addition.

6) Stir in any of the optional ingredients (chopped toasted nuts, coconut, chocolate chips)

7) Bake for 40-50 minutes until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Source: Kate

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