Brownie Bust?

 Red. Velvet. Cheesecake. Brownies. Have you ever heard a more delicious combination of words? Me either! So of course I made them from scratch, and of course, because I am so domesticated, EVERYTHING went wrong....

First of all, the recipe told me to use parchment paper in the bottom of my pan...WTF right? And just so you know, wax paper is not an acceptable substitute...after contemplating what I was supposed to do, I finally caved and called my aunt for clarification. She informed me that parchment paper makes it easier to remove particularly sticky baked goods from their pans when finished. She also told me that she never uses it so I should just use some no stick spray instead. Fewf. So I sprayed the cake pan really good and got to work on the batter.

The chocolate had to be cut up finely so it would melt well with the butter, Dad and I thought a cheese grater would work nicely. Well the chocolate got stuck in the grater and when it was out, I think about half of the amount of needed chocolate made it into the bowl... oops! Then, I got red food coloring everywhere! Dad's kitchen looked like a legit crime scene.

Once the brownie batter was done I dumped it into the pan and it spread reallllly thin, because I used the wrong size pan, so I greased up a smaller pan and scraped as much of the sticky mess from the former into it as possible. Ugh. The cream cheese mixture was so much easier to make and extremely delicious (ask me about the Healthiest Loser Challenge later...) but when I "dolloped" and "swirled" it into the batter...no way was that mess going to come out looking like brownies. So of course I had to smooth it all over.

It turned pale pink and very slightly resembled the beautiful red and white swirly design it was supposed to be. Double ugh.

At this point I was so totally done with the whole mess that I said, "Oh well," and put it in to bake. Not realizing that brownies rise on the outside and not on the inside, so when I went to check on them and saw this happening, I FLIPPED out. But Dad assured me this happens with Mom's cream cheese brownies too, so I let it slide.

When they came out and I finally had one, I decided they weren't sweet enough (probably because of the chocolate problem) and decided to bring the batch to work and be done with it.

Here's the twist....the office finished them off in about an hour! Hmmmmm...I guess I don't have an excuse not to make them again for book club. Ugh.