It is a tragedy of epic proportions that in 2 years of blogging, I don’t have any posts about brownies. No longer. Today I’ll share with one of my many favorite brownie recipes.
But first, let me tell you a funny story about brownies…
I didn’t know there was such a thing as brownie mix in a box until I went to college. During my freshman year, some of my friends and I decided to bake brownies as a study treat. They suggested we go to Wawa (the 7-11 type convenience store across the street) to buy the ingredients. I was skeptical that Wawa sold Baker’s chocolate, but I went along thinking that perhaps the fancy Philadelphia convenience stores sold more than the 7-11s in Denver.
In the Wawa, my friends picked up a box of brownie mix. Then they proceeded to make fun of my lack of knowledge and joked that my childhood must have been like Little House on the Prairie.
They joked until they tasted my homemade brownies. Once they did, they wondered why no one told them how easy it was to make brownies from scratch. With as little as six ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, chocolate, eggs, vanilla) you can make brownies that taste 10 times better than box brownies. And if you add in a few more ingredients, your brownies will be unbeatable.
What are you waiting for? Go make some of these today! You’ll never go back to brownie box mix again. And so what if I didn’t know about brownie mix until I was 18 years old. I was eating delicious homemade brownies in blissful ignorance. 
Almond Brownies
Ingredients:
4 oz unsweetened chocolate
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/3 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup almonds (optional)Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Melt the chocolate and butter together in a medium sized saucepan. Whisk until smooth. Add in the sugar and stir until smooth. Add in eggs one at a time and stir until combined. Stir in almond and vanilla extracts.
Add flour, baking soda and salt. Stir gently until just combined. Mix in the almonds.
Pour the batter into a 9″ x 13″ pan lined with parchment paper.
Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the tester comes out slightly moist. (Don’t kill the brownies by over cooking them. You want them to be a little moist in the middle)
