Tonight I was jonesin' for some chocolate, so I threw together a bowl of brownie mix out of the box. We have a vegan in the house, so I figured that I'd just use Ener-G to replace the 2 eggs needed for the recipe. 2/3C of oil, the Ener-G egg stuff, and 1/4C of water were called for and the mix looked a little slippery batter, but I threw it in anyway. Well, after the required time, I looked in to see the oil bubbling on the surface and when they came out, they were the consistency of bubble gum that was left in a hot car too long.
I was a little bent.
I searched the web and quickly came across stories on baby's mama sites about how this happens all the time and I should follow such & such recipe instead. Screw that. I'm not quitting. They were already ruined and couldn't get any worse, so I went into improvised repair mode.
Add a rounded 1/4C AP flour, 1 teaspoon Backing Powder, stir until the ball of what appears to be molasses and sawdust soaks up the flour. Add 1/4C milk and stir. (2% is what I had) It'll start to break down the ball a bit and once that's soaked up, add another 1/4C of milk and stir it in. By this point, your hand will be pretty damned tired. Now get the blender out or prep the Kitchen Aid mixer. Toss this slurry in and hit it with the mixer. If it's not wet enough to be compliant, add more milk. Beat the crap out of it with the mixer and add more milk (a splash at a time) until the batter starts to look like cake batter. It will have lightened up some and most of the chunks of 'prior screwup brownie' will have broken down.
Pour it in a pan and put it in the hotbox. Mine was 15mins @ 350 for a 13x9. The original recipe called for 24 minutes, but this stuff was thinner so I cut the time. The toothpick trick won't work too well because of the prior screwup, so make sure that the top has a good crust before you yank 'em or they'll be gooey on the bottom.
Hope this helps.
