brownies

so, our ward does one of those ultra craft days where you can make something like 6 different items and most would make great Christmas presents.

This year they offered some great stuff, some ok stuff, and some good values.

The good values were in the form of brownies in a bag, and pumpkin muffins in a bag. At 50 cents each, this was a good value.

I ordered 4 of each. I thought these would make great co-worker and neighbor gifts.

I showed up at the activity to make my mixes. they even provided a cute holiday themed bag!

Anyway, I think we gave 6 away and were given one.

So a few nights ago I thought, yum, lets make some of these brownies. Since we had a choice we decided to keep the brownie mixes for last just in case we didn't give them all away.

So I followed the directions, except I used a substitute for the buttermilk. Seriously, who keeps or buys buttermilk on a regular basis? So I bought one of those containers of dry powder that you use to replace buttermilk. It was in the cooking isle.

So I followed the other directions to a T. I put it in an 8x8x2 pan and dutifully set my oven to 400 degrees and my timer to 40 minutes.

At 40 minutes my fork didn't come out clean. (I was out of toothpicks). It was so bad that I set the timer for another 20 minutes. After that it was still not clean.

I set it for another 10 minutes.

After that, I think I went for another 5 and then it was finally done.

The top of the brownies were slightly burned, but the brownies were done!

And the result. They just weren't very chocolatey despite the extra chocolate chips that were in the mix. Even my hubby didn't like them.

Well, tonight I decided to try them again. This time I put them in a 9x13 cake pan.

I wasn't certain that this would solve the problem that I had the other night, so I set the timer for 35 minutes to hopefully avoid overbaking.

At 35 minutes they were almost there and I set them for another 5 minutes.

they were done.

And they weren't very good! I thought that because they were made with chocolate chips and buttermilk that they would be extra yummy. And they were just not very good.

I'm totally surprised and a little bummed because we have another mix on the cupboard to be used. I guess if I throw it away it was only 50 cents.

So the moral of this story is this - if you make a mix at a super activity, try it out before you give it away. Lucky for us the only person we gave the brownie mix to was a bachelor and will most likely never make it, or will re-gift it.

I'm mildly worried about the pumpkin muffin mixes we gave out....