Iowa Brownies
Posted by in Food
I haven’t posted a major disaster in a long time, so I was definitely due. I found this recipe for Iowa Brownies in the Penzey’s spice catalog. They sounded good – made with sour cream — something really different. Teen Martha (who is interning part-time at a lab at the med school this summer but has whole days with nothing to do other than download music for me and watch My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding) decided to give it a whirl since I am in the middle of madness trying to write a book in a month (details to come). Total disaster. The recipe says to bake in a 9×13 jellyroll pan. It just barely fit and then it overflowed all over the oven. In mid-bake we (and by we I mean Mr. MarthaAndMe who gets called in for the really big disasters) transferred to a 9 inch square baking pan. Huge mess. It’s all over my oven which smells like burning cake whenever I turn it on now.
The frosting didn’t work either. It was dry and clumpy and she had to add more liquid. The end result was a brownie that tasted like cake (did not have brownie texture at all) and frosting no one liked. Total fail. I don’t think this recipe was tested by Penzey’s.
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Wow, that’s a lot of flour for a brownie recipe! I’ll have to remember not to bake with a Penzey’s recipe!
I really think there must have been a mistake typing this recipe up. Nothing about it worked.
I so appreciate your sharing this! I’ve had many cooking failures lately and I always feel like the only person this happens to. Nice to know even pros like you have disasters. I hate the ones that require oven cleaning afterward!
Oh I have my share of them – who doesn’t? This was such a HUGE disaster this time, it was unbelievable.
I made this recipe, which I got out of the Penzey’s catalog a couple weeks back. I won’t make it again. I have jelly roll pans but they are about 10″ X 16″. I used a 9″ X 12″ cake pan since it was only an inch smaller than the size stated in the recipe. The brownies were more cake-like than the crispy, chewy brownies that I like. They also had a somewhat bitter taste in spots–don’t know if I didn’t mix the soda in that well. The frosting recipe, which made a lot, was a tad too sweet. I don’t think Penzey’s tests recipes.