So, I made Amy Sedaris' Aunt Joyce's brownies out of her new book, "I Like You, Hospitality Under the Influence."
A couple observations: 1) She needs more instructions in the recipes. Like... I only knew to BUTTER the pan because I stalked her at the Dadeland Macy's for her cooking show, the day after Roger and I stalked her in Fort Lauderdale at her book signing. I only knew to use a 9x9 pan for that reason also.
(For those of you who have no idea who Amy Sedaris is, she's the sister of my favorite writer, David Sedaris, a character actress who has appeared on Sex and the City, Just Shoot Me, and most recently, as the Cat Lady in My Name Is Earl, and known and loved best by most people as Jerri Blank, the 47-year-old ex junkie whore who goes back to High School in Comedy Central's now defunct Series, "Strangers with Candy.")
2) I think my oven needs recalibration. There is no difference between 350 and 325 on the dial, at least according to my oven thermometer. This resulted in the top of the brownies getting "very well done" before the inside of the damn things even warmed up, causing me to bake with foil, and have lots of "calibration and testing" interruptions. Eventually, even though her 25 minute baking time was WAYYY OFF (that should have clued me in - brownies have to bake for at LEAST 40 minutes...)
3) Those bitches are rich. I poked in the pecans that were optional and lemme tell ya - I can normally polish off a half a pan of brownies without batting an eyelash. With these, I ate two and I'm now about to go into a diabetic coma...
They're good, but I'm going to have to take her recipe instructions with a grain of salt from now on... and if I ever use the book's charmingly white trash and hokey recipes for actual entertaining, I'm going to need to make a dry run of them before I actually make anything for company...
Boring, I know. I'm sorry. I'll have better posts coming soon... once things annoy me.