Seriously.

Usually I'm all about the "let the kid eat with her own two hands so she can learn from her messy mistakes" approach to meals and snacks, but ...

... if that kid drops huge pieces of stupendously awesome fudgy brownie on my not-clean-enough-for-the-three-second-rule floor one more time, I'm going to backhand her clean over the dining room table. In this house there are some things you DO NOT WASTE - biscuits, brownies, and bacon being chief among them.

From now on, learning be damned - I HOLD THE BROWNIES.

***

Oh, and the brownie recipe can be found here, courtesy of Fine Cooking and Cindy Mitchell. It was yet another recipe that's been in my "to be tried" folder for years, and when Liza demanded at 7:30am that we had to bake "cookies," this was the only recipe for which I had all the ingredients. Happy accident, that.

I like this recipe - everything gets mixed in the top of the double boiler you use to melt the chocolate, so there's minimal cleanup. And the old "grease the pan and parchment paper the bottom" trick worked like a charm - the whole brownie flipped right out onto the rack when commanded to in a stern voice. Yummmm - 8" square of brownie goodness ... and six more hours until there's anyone here to prevent me from eating the whole thing myself - bwahahahahahaha!

Seriously, though, if you like your brownies dense and fudgy, these are really nice, if a bit greasy - I'm interested to see if that diminishes when they're stored overnight, but fat chance of that happening :) For the rest of you brownie lightweights, I'll report back on the "cakey" and "chewy" variations once I get more chocolate and eggs.