How NOT to Make Brownies
Two Great Tastes That Do NOT Taste Good Together!
I, who took over kitchen duties four years ago when I retired (and continued with it after I went back to work part-time a couple of months ago), have a rule about cooking and baking:
Everything you make should either have garlic or cinnamon in it, but never both. What happened to me the other day makes me think of the old, seemingly nonsensical saying, The Exception that Proves the Rule.
When making Brownies (not from scratch, from a box), I don’t deliberately use cinnamon (although perhaps there’s a touch or pinch of it in the provided powder, who knows), and I certainly wouldn’t purposefully, mindfully, intentionally use garlic, either, but …
A couple of nights ago I threw together the Brownie ingredients as usual (water, olive oil, egg) then, after vigorously stirring until combined, added the brownie mix/powder and combined it all.
While I like Brownies, I love — no, adore! — Brownie batter (uncooked — I’ve been eating bits of raw egg this way all of my life, and have never had a problem doing so; our family has always said that we have “cast-iron stomachs”; I don’t know if it’s a combination of our Scottish and Native American DNA or what, but that’s my theory as to why we possess this superpower, albeit without any evidence to back it up, it’s just a gut feeling [no pun intended]).
I tasted the result; not as delectable as usual; some odd and unpleasant flavor permeated the porridge. Why? How? Was the spoon I used unwashed? No. What could it be? Bad water? I semi-ignored it, cooked the Brownies, and later, when my wife and I sampled the baked brownies, both of us realized something was “off.” When she asked what ingredients I had used, I inspected, and experienced a head-slapping moment when I noticed my newly-opened bottle of olive oil was infused with:
Roasted Garlic! In Brownies?!? Arggghhhhhhh!!!! Yuk!
A word to the wise [guy]: Garlic is great, but not in Brownies.
Caveat Pistor! Caveat Ficedula! (Baker Beware! Eater Beware!) Chocolate and Garlic, unlike Chocolate and Peanut Butter, although being great tastes, do NOT taste great together!
Normally, a batch of Brownies only lasts about a day in our place: my wife eats a couple, and someone else who shall remain nameless eats the rest. So the positive spin on the ingredient malfunction is that adding garlic to your brownies extends their pan life — instead of a day, they lasted a week (even when smothered with peanut butter, the off-putting garlicky taste remained).
