Comfort Food - Simple/Quick Brownie Recipe

I need comfort food. After a bad turn of events (there's still hope, I think) yesterday, I had a craving for chocolate.

Chocolate makes all things better :)

I went into my pantry and found that we had two containers of cocoa powder (dark and reg cocoa) and decided that I would be making brownies today. Besides, it's a good distraction... music and cooking are both really good things to distract yourself with. So, that's what I've been doing... baking and recording some covers on guitar and piano... and looking at multiple maps for a sweet fantastical escape (? maybe).

I've made brownies from scratch multiple times before and I have a few people asking for the recipe... so here it is.

Ingredients:

2/3 cups of cocoa powder

2 cups of sugar

4 eggs

1 cup and 4 Tbsp. of olive oil

1 Tbsp. of vanilla extract

1 rounded cup of flour

1 tsp. of salt

* optional: add 1 cup of chopped nuts or chocolate chips

1. Mix first 5 ingredients well

2. Add the salt and flour.

3. Mix everything until it's well blended.

* add in the optional ingredients if you want

4. Pour mixture into a (9x13 inch) pan.

5. Smooth out the mix on the pan

6. Bake at 350 degrees F for about 30 minutes

7. Take out of oven and let cool before serving.

So the original recipe called for 1 cup of chopped nuts, but since I have a nut allergy, I obviously skip that step. I had some semi-sweet dark chocolate chips left from making those Kick-ass Cookies a couple of weeks ago, so I added them into my brownie mix for a more chocolatey goodness.

*note: Since I used chocolate chips, I reduced the sugar from 2 cups to 1 and half cups of sugar.

I used mostly dark chocolate cocoa powder for this brownie batch (I added 2/3 dark cocoa powder and 1/3 of reg cocoa powder to make up that 2/3 cup). The result is delicious.

This is good with vanilla ice cream or milk, whatever you prefer :)

I'm gonna have to run a few extra miles tomorrow x.x

I woke up and watched the Today Show while having a breakfast and I would like to make the Old Fashioned Cakes from the 1930s... check out the video clip from the Today Show.... they all look so good. If I end up trying to make some of them, I would need volunteers to eat :( would anyone be interested?

I'm taking some of these brownies for the lovely ladies at band practice tonight... I love cooking/baking for others, because it makes people happy... especially since comfort food like this is meant to be shared :D