3X Chocolate Brownies
It’s time for some serious health food, mental health that is. Low light ‘winter blues’ combined with the volume of decay and abandonment in my hometown calls me to prescribe some powerful drugs.
Outside single digit temperatures haven’t diminished the activities in the abandoned building next door. A college-age couple is designer dressed and carry overstuffed backpacks. They wear soft-sculpture woven winter hats, huddle in an abandoned stairwell, and pass a crack pipe. A plastic bag-for-cash transaction is made.
A young woman arrives wearing a little-girl, puffy pink nylon jacket. She is carrying an infant swaddled inside a matching pink puffy pouch. The young man holds the baby while the mother nurses on the glass tit. Minutes later the baby lays against the chain link fence on the black asphalt parking lot while the mother walks in circles talking on her cell phone.
I’m inside my Ivory Tower baking a batch of 3X Chocolate Brownies. The mixture of unsweetened, bittersweet and semi-sweet chocolate provides hours of relief.
48 triangular pieces of ‘legal euphoria’ are measured out into 3 bite brownies. The prescription reads: “Take 3 bites a day. No more than one piece a day. Please do not abuse this drug”.
I started thinking about making some of these anti-depressant 3X Brownies after seeing Lars von Trier’s latest film, Melancholia, at the Flint Institute of Arts last week. Depressing films of this magnitude should not be shown here in this graveyard, ‘end of the world’ city.
At least the film had a happy ending when the miserable lives of the main characters ended. The apocalypse wedding was out of this world!
The mind-altering 3X drug of choice will be cut into triangles, packed into parchment lined, ‘born again’, “food coffins”.
Some go to a caregiver in the service of his ailing wife, some to an older friend who is feeling isolated. Other stops along the way include the sculptor next door, a disabled neighbor, and a ‘double’ to my parents who funded the ingredients.
The lion’s share of the brownies will go to the brave residents of the Occupy Flint camp. I’m hoping they are the ones who will help deliver a new Flint, transforming this compost heap of greed into a new postindustrial center of art and agriculture. These new ‘transformers’ are continuing the legacy of their grandfathers who ignited the workers revolution with the’ Sit Down Strike ‘ that created a new working class.
Sadly, this is the only hope I see for Flint now occupied by a Governor-appointed Emergency Manager.
When I arrived at Occupy Camp residents were gathered around a wood -burning stove. A musician put down his guitar when someone announced, “it’s the organic man”. When I was asked the contents of the box I answered “Dark chocolate brownies, my drug of choice”. A hearty response told me they had arrived at the right time.
The last stop is a hard-working grandma who refers to these dark anti-depressants as ‘pieces of pleasure’.
Me? I’ll pass on the brownies. I have all the well being I can handle right now.
Remember, ‘Never underestimate the power of chocolate’.
Brownies to the people!
Adapted from Recipe Bible
Makes 24 large brownies that I cut into 48 triangles
1 cup (2 sticks) Unsalted Butter
4 ounces (4 squares) Unsweetened Chocolate
1cup Bittersweet Chocolate Chips
4 Eggs
2 cups Light Brown Sugar
¼ cup Dark Corn Syrup
2 teaspoons Vanilla
2 ½ cups Unbleached Flour
½ teaspoon Baking Soda
½ teaspoon Salt
2 cups Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
Preheat the oven to 350-degrees.
Butter an 11×14 inch baking pan and dust with cocoa powder or flour.
Melt the butter, unsweetened chocolate and bittersweet chocolate in a bowl placed over hot water or in a microwave. Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature.
Whisk together the flour, soda and salt in a separate bowl.
Beat the eggs, brown sugar and corn syrup until smooth then add the vanilla. Add the chocolate mixture and continue to mix until combined.
Add the dry ingredients just until blended. Fold in chocolate chips.
Spread the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for about 30 minutes or just until a toothpick inserted 1” from the side of the pan comes out with a few moist crumbs.
Cool the brownies on a rack until they reach room temperature before cutting.
Cutting the brownies is easier if they have chilled for several hours.
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