When life gives you snow....make brownies!

My backyard looks like this today
So I made these

We are expecting 18-24 inches of snow this weekend. We are not expecting BeanieDaddy to make it home from work tonight. So, to get us through the afternoon and into tomorrow I decided to make brownies. Brownies seem to be the forgotten child of the chocolate dessert family. At least they are here. I'm more apt to do a cake, or cupcake or candy or something else. Brownies are usually an afterthought for some reason.

But I knew I had the ingredients on hand (at least I was pretty sure) and a page from my Southern Living Christmas Cookbook with a menu for a coffee and chocolate party has been taunting me for weeks. However, I had to make some alterations. The recipe calls for bittersweet baking chocolate and I had semisweet. After doing a little investigation, I learned that you can add unsweetened cocoa to the semisweet chocolate and you would have something closer to bittersweet. Also, the recipe calls for 2 cups of semisweet chocolate morsels. I have had a bag of raspberry chocolate morsels in the pantry waiting for a home so I used them instead. The result: pure heaven. It turned into one of those desserts that is so yummy but a little too rich to eat too much at one time. The hope is that these will last a while.

Here is the full recipe with my changes.

Dark Chocolate Brownies
Adapted from 2008 Southern Living Christmas Cookbook
1 cup butter
8 ounces bittersweet baking chocolate squares
2 cups raspberry chocolate morsels, divided
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1 Tbs vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts, toasted
1 cup all-purpose flour, divided
1/2 teaspoon salt

Microwave butter, bittersweet chocolate, and 1 cup morsels in a 4-quart bowl at high 1 1/2 to 2 minutes or until chocolate is melted, stirring mixture every 30 seconds. Whisk in sugar, eggs and vanilla.

Toss together walnuts, 1 Tbs flour, and remaining 1 cup of morsels. Stir remaining four and salt into sugar mixture. Stir in walnut mixture. Spread batter into a greased 13- x 9-inch pan.

Bake at 350-degrees for 30-40 minutes or until edges begin to pull away from pan (a wooden pick inserted in center will not come out clean). Cool on a wire rack.

In addition to the brownies, I made this pulled pork marinade recipe from The Naptime Chef. I doubled the recipe and added 1 tablespoon of cayenne pepper and a little more than a pinch of red pepper flakes to give it a little more of a kick. And wow did it add kick. The smell of the pork roast cooking in the crock pot all day is amazing. I think this will be my go-to marinade/barbecue recipe from now on. Too bad Dad won't be home tonight, but there will be plenty when he returns.