Have flour, will travel

Gillian and I were looking for something fun to do on Sunday afternoon while Jamie and Brianna went to the Tennis Center.  We started off at the park for a bit, but it was still a little too damp after some overnight thunderstorms.  I remembered that some folks from King Arthur Flour were going to be in town for a baking demonstration on yeast breads.  G had been to another cooking/baking demo with me a couple months ago, and was game to try out this one.  It turned out not to be the best for her--it was a much larger group, so it was hard for her to see, and she spent most of the time playing games on my iPad.  We only stayed for about an hour before her attention span hit its limit.  But I enjoyed the part of the presentation that I did get to hear, including some entertaining stories.  With my level of experience, I didn't learn a lot of new stuff, but I'm intrigued by some of the classes that KAF offers at their Baking Education Center in Vermont.  I'm going to add a trip to Norwich to my Mondo Beyondo list.  It would be a great opportunity to meet my blogging friend Rebecca, too.  Maybe I can convince some of my other baking/blogging friends to meet up with me there and we can all take a class together.  Anyone interested? =)
 

When we got to the demo, we each got a booklet of recipes.  G immediately pointed out the recipe for Double Fudge Brownies.  When we got home, J & B still weren't back, so I suggested that we could bake something together.  G quickly suggested the brownies.  I knew it wouldn't be a problem to get my employees to eat some of them, so we made the full 13"x9" pan.  The recipe calls for brown sugar, which I think helps keep the brownies moist.  I used natural cocoa powder rather than the Dutch-processed that was called for (I prefer the way it tastes) but did keep the espresso powder to boost the chocolate flavor.  The somewhat sneaky ingredient is white whole wheat flour.  Granted, these are brownies, so there isn't a whole lot of flour, but a little extra whole grain is always a good idea, right?

The verdict?  You would never guess that there was whole grain flour in these brownies.  They are fudgy and a bit chewy, and altogether yummy.  The change in cocoa worked out fine.  We added a mix of chocolate chips and m&ms to our batter, but next time, I'll put the m&ms on top instead.  The candy shells sort of melted into the brownies when we let them rest overnight.

If you'd like to try these for yourself, you can find the recipe in the KAF Whole Grain Baking cookbook.  And if you think you'd like to join me on a trip to New England, let me know!

p.s. We got this nice KAF bowl scraper to take home with us--you can never have too many of those!