Brownies and How They Shaped Aerial Combat

American Dessert

BROWNIES

INGREDIENTS

13 tablespoons butter
1 cup unsweetened cocoa
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
3 eggs
½ cup flour
no-stick spray.

Brownies assuming a defensive posture against lions.

SPECIAL ITEM

8″-square baking pan
or 8″-square oven-safe casserole

Makes 16 brownies. Takes 40 minutes to cook and 45 minutes to cool, if you can wait that long.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 325 degrees if you are using a baking pan and if 300 degrees if you are using a casserole dish. Add butter to pan. Cook using low-medium heat until butter melts. Stir frequently. Add cocoa. Reduce heat to low. Mix thoroughly with whisk until all lumps disappear. Remove from heat. Add salt, sugar, and vanilla extract one at a time to pan. Mix with whisk after each ingredient until mixture becomes thoroughly blended. Add eggs one at time. Mix with whisk until well blended. Add flour. Mix batter with whisk until you can no longer see any flour and there are no lumps.

Spray baking pan with no-stick spray. Pour batter into baking pan. Smooth batter with spatula. Bake batter at 325 degrees for 20-to-25 minutes or until a toothpick stuff into middle of batter comes out clean. Carefully remove 8″-x-8″ brownie from baking pan. Let cool for 45 minutes. Cut into 16 2″-square brownies.

TIDBITS

1) The natural enemy of the feral brownie is the lion. This is why brownies inhabiting the African grasslands travel in threes. (See above picture.) There is safety in numbers.

2) Aerial combat first occurred during World War One. Single planes proved easy prey to multiple enemy planes. However, there was no favored flight formation until Burton Manley from South Africa wrote the Royal Flying Corps how brownies covering territory in a certain pattern–Shown above–rarely suffered losses to even the most ferocious lions and that maybe their pilots should do the same. The Royal Flying Corps gave it a try. It worked! British pilots dominated the skies. The war would be won. A grateful British government gave Manley a medal, a cookie and some milk.

– Chef Paul

My cookbook, Eat Me: 169 Fun Recipes From All Over the World,  and my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, are available in paperpack
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