Recipe File: Moosewood Fudge Brownies

Picnic-perfect fudgy brownies from a Moosewood Restaurant cookbook

Here’s another delish brownie recipe from the Great Lakes region. Paige whipped up a batch of these for a picnic; she found them in the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home cookbook. They’re simple, quick, easy to eat and transport—very different from the denser and gooier (but also yummy) Chicago’s Palmer House hotel brownie we indulged in earlier this year.

I’ve featured other recipes from Moosewood Restaurant here at Great Lakes Gazette. Moosewood was founded in 1973 by a 19-member collective in Ithaca, New York. The emphasis is on vegetarian and natural foods, but that doesn’t exclude desserts like these brownies, which you’ll find on the restaurant menu.

Moosewood Fudge Brownies
from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home

Makes 16 brownies

1/2 cup butter
3 squares (1 ounce each) unsweetened chocolate
1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1/2 cup unbleached white flour

Preheat the oven to 350 F

Butter an 8 or 9-inch square baking pan

In a heavy large pot, melt the butter and chocolate together, stirring occasionally. While they melt, assemble the rest of the ingredients (if mixing by hand, beat the eggs with a fork in a separate bowl).

When the butter and chocolate have melted, remove the pot from the heat. Add the brown sugar and vanilla and beat by hand or with an electric mixer. Add the eggs (just crack them directly into the pot if using an electric mixer). Stir in the flour, and mix until the batter is thoroughly blended and smooth.

Pour the batter into the pan and bake for about 20 minutes, until the brownies are just beginning to pull away from the sides of the pan and are fudgy in the center. For more cakelike brownies, bake an additional 5 minutes.