The Expat's Oven: Easy Brownies Edition

The Expat's Oven: Easy Brownies Edition 

Welcome to the next installment of The Expat's Oven! This week we're making brownies!

Start with a cup of sugar, 

Add half a cup of flour,

Obviously, if we're making brownies, the most important ingredient is CHOCOLATE!!! So, you'll want to add half a cup of cocoa powder to the dry mix. When I snapped all of these pics for this post, I only had Tesco cocoa powder from Home Plus: 

But since then I've run out and replaced it with FAIR TRADE cocoa powder from iherb (product link here). Remember why fair trade is so important to me? Here's another reason.

Next you'll want to add 1/4 of a teaspoon each of baking powder and salt (which are both super easy to find).

Ok, so mix together all your dry ingredients and set it aside. You can even bag all of the dry before hand, then you have an easy brownie mix (without any preservatives) on hand if you need to whip up some brownies in a pinch!

Next up, add 2 eggs. I usually whip them before I mix anything else with them, just to be sure they'll mix well.

Add 1/2 a cup of canola oil (two Korean brands are represented here, cause I didn't have quite enough left for the recipe. Whatevs.)

If you're a fellow American and you aren't exactly sure what to do with all this metric business, you can download a converter app to help you in the kitchen! I've marked my metric measuring cup with 1/2 cup intervals to make my life easier, and I have an oven temp cheat sheet on my fridge. I'm pretty used to metric by now, but this app has come in really handy! 

Last step: 1 teaspoon each of vanilla and almond extract. I've mentioned before how much I love almond extract with chocolate recipes and it holds true here too. It's the secret ingredient, the wow factor, in these brownies!

Add the wet to the dry, mix it on up,

Pour it in a greased 8x8 pan, bake at 180*C for 20-25 minutes (or until a toothpick comes out clean) and there you have it! Easy, delicious brownies!

Go get baking! 

Printable copy/paste instructions:

The Expat's Oven: Brownies Edition 

1 c. sugar
1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. cocoa powder
1/4 t. salt
1/4 t. baking powder
*you can mix all of that and bag it ahead of time, then use it as non-preservative brownie mix later on! Then when you're ready for your brownies, you'll add...
2 eggs
1/2 c. oil
1 t. vanilla extract
1 t. almond extract

Preheat the oven to 180*C. Mix everything well at a medium-high speed, then pour into a greased 8x8 pan. Bake for 20-25 min, until a toothpick comes out clean.