Let’s Mix It Up!

If you have spent ANY time here at Tummy Treasure over the past few years I’ve been blogging, you know how I feel about brownies made from a mix.  You know how much I want to like them, and you know that every once in a while I pick up a mix, make it up, and then feel cheated.  You will also know that it doesn’t seem to matter what incarnation of homemade brownie I’ve made, I like them all, as long as they’re whipped up from scratch.

This week though, I needed some brownies for a project for the kids- and I promise I’ll share about that later- and I really hesitated before grabbing a brownie mix.  I thought about just eliminating the brownies from their list of things they needed, but decided that for what they were going to use it for, a mix would suffice.  As I wandered down the baking aisle, I saw the bright yellow signs that told me some mixes were on sale, and for that I was happy.  I was even happier when I saw that the brand of mix on sale happened to be Ghirardelli brownie mixes.  I’ve ALWAYS wanted to try them out, but for the price of the mix, I could buy all the ingredients to make brownies from scratch.  On sale though, they were a bargain, so I picked up a box and away I went.

Yesterday I made the mix- it was straightforward, add water, oil and egg, beat together and then bake.  My first notion that these brownies actually might be tasty came when I licked some batter off my finger.  And then proceeded to lick the rubber scraper clean, and eye up the remainder of the batter in the bowl. I’m not normally a batter person, but golly, this tasted like real chocolate!  The brownies baked and cooled, and at long last, I was able to cut into them.

Holy buckets, if I didn’t know better, I would swear these brownies were homemade.  Honestly and truly, these brownies are delicious.  They are dense and have the perfect brownie texture- somewhere between fudgy and cakey.  Oh, and they taste like real chocolate!  I didn’t detect any hint of fake brownie mix flavor at all.  My only regret?  This mix makes a 9 x 9 pan of brownies and not a full size 9 x 13.  Then again, maybe that’s a good thing.

I would totally buy this mix again. In fact, the next time I find this on sale, I may very well stock up a bit, because these brownies from a box totally rock.  I’ll still be making homemade brownies, but for ease of use, I really have to recommend Ghirardelli’s brownie mix as a great back-up plan.