Old fashioned..

 ..Brownies.

Really what's not to love?  

I looked all over the internet for the basic Betty Crocker Brownie recipe I use and couldn't find it.  Page after page of fancified brownies, but not the original.  That's just sad.

Ready to eat!

So here is the original recipe, straight from my 1975 Betty Crocker cook book:

Brownies

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate (I use Ghirardelli's)

2/3 cup shortening

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/4 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 cup chopped nuts (I leave these out)

Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease baking pan, 13x9x2 inches.  Melt chocolate and shortening in large saucepan over low heat.  Remove from heat.  Mix in sugar, eggs and vanilla.  Stir in remaining ingredients and spread in pan.

Bake 30 minutes or until brownies start to pull away from sides of pan.  Do not over bake.  Cool and cut into bars.

Let's make some brownies!

Unsweetened chocolate

I like to cut my chocolate into little pieces to help it melt easier.   Throw the chocolate and shortening together over low heat.  It is important to heat the chocolate and shortening just enough so that it mixes together, you aren't trying to cook anything over the stove here.

ready to melt

melted together and cooling down

Be careful when you add your eggs, if your mixture hasn't cooled down enough you will get scrambled eggs.  Yuck!

no scramble eggs here :)

Add the rest of your ingredients and stir.  Be careful not to overmix, nobody wants tough brownies.

Mixing in the dry ingredients

The batter will be really thick once it is incorporated.  You can't pour it into your pan, you will have to spoon it in and spread it around.

ready for the oven

A quick half hour later and we are ready for business.

cooling off and waiting for the kids

Enjoy!

Nutella..

Brownies.

The gooey center is a glob of Nutella

Yep, Nutella Brownies.  Can there be anything more decadent?  Trust me when I say not so much.
 
I made Sunset Magazine's Chocolate Nutella Brownies today.  I've had the recipe for a while, I was just waiting for the right day to try it out and today was the day.

The recipe itself is a pretty basic brownie recipe.  The only changes are that both melted unsweetened chocolate AND cocoa are used. 

The melted butter and chocolate are stirred into a dry sugar and cocoa mix.

 Add some eggs, vanilla and salt.  Then once that is completely mixed, stir in the flour. 

Then instead of baking the brownies off in a 9*13" pan, bake them in muffin pans.  I buttered the pans really, really well since I didn't want my brownies to stick.

 Make a small indention in the top of the brownie, and spoon on some Nutella goodness.

All ready for the oven.  Being the good planner that I am, I doubled the recipe.  The original recipe makes 8 brownies, in my family of 5 that means war.  I managed to get 18 brownies using my ice cream scoop to measure out the batter per cup.  You could probably use a miniature muffin pan and get a lot of bite size brownies, just be sure to reduce the baking time.

 

Brownies are out of the oven and my husband has already sampled the goods.

This recipe is a winner and will definitely be put into regular rotation.  A cup of tea and a Nutella brownie, that might just be heaven.

Enjoy!