Sunday Supper: Baking Without Starting A Fire – Yeah, I Did It!

January 17, 2011 by despitemyself 4 Comments

“Are you casting asparagus on my cooking?”
~Curly Howard~ (Cooking Quotes)

So it’s actually Monday morning now.  And sure, brownies & corn muffins aren’t so much supper as a dessert & a side, or bread, or whatever the civilized masses would consider it, respectively.  But This is my blog, & you get what I give you when you get it.  And you’ll like it!

Inspired by Hungry Girl’s brownie recipe using a mix & canned pumpkin, I decided to finally do something with the box of brownie mix we’ve had sitting around for a couple of months.  It came in the Angel Food box from October or November.  We had also acquired a pack of yellow corn muffin mix, & I thought, why the hell not?

I started with the corn muffins at dinner.  They turned out pretty well.  The muffin batter was too thick with just the pumpkin, so I added a little yogurt.  It was a 7oz packet of dry mix, so I only used about half a 15oz can of pumpkin & a few plops of plain nonfat yogurt – maybe 1/4-1/3c.  The cooked according to the package directions using the top limit of cooking time (400f for twenty minutes for these).

If I did it again, I would add more yogurt maybe, or a little water, to lighten them up a bit.  The muffins were dense with just a hint of pumpkin to them.  I didn’t notice the yogurt, outside of being very moist.  I didn’t smooth them 0ut after spooning the batter into the cups, so they came out very peaky & rustic looking.  I like the extra bits of crustiness it gave the tops of them.  These would have also been good with some honey in them.  If you aren’t familiar with yellow corn muffins, they are the sweeter (& individually sized) version of the typical white cornbread.

When dinner was done I whipped up the brownies & put them in the oven.  For them just a box of Deluxe Fudge Brownie Mix & a 15oz can of pumpkin.  I may have actually used more than 15oz because I guesstimated from a 29oz can of pumpkin.  The consistency of this batter was fine & didn’t need anything.  I was using a small convection oven & both out cake pans were too big, so I went with the loaf pan over the using the muffin tin again.  I wanted to try something different.

I cooked it till I could smell it & when I stabbed it the fork came back clean.  The typical markers of doneness in baking as I understand it.  In hindsight I maybe should have adjusted the cooking temp for using a loaf pan instead of the flat cake pan, & probably cooked it longer.  I’m not really sure how long it cooked to be honest though, because I didn’t check the time when I put them in & then fixed my dinner before going to sit down.

One of the many reasons I’ll never be a great baker is my lack of focus.  I actually forgot about them for a bit while I was doing something else.  Oops.  But it all turned out well.  They were again dense & moist, maybe a little too moist/underdone, but not nastily so.  And since I didn’t use eggs, it didn’t matter.  I’m not crazy about the flavor.  They just aren’t chocolatey.  Think that’s on the mix I used though, & not the method.  I’d try this again with another brand.  Might be good with a peanut butter cookie mix, too.