We still had the old Nexis printout of the recipe from the New York Times. Butter and chocolate. I watched them melt together in a pan over low heat, the chocolate swirling into the clear liquid butter, and it all came back. This thing after that thing, stirred into a bowl: the butter-chocolate mix, sugar, an egg, another egg, flour, vanilla. Into the pan, into the oven, out again in 20 minutes. Effortless.
Tom Scocca makes Mark Bittman’s brownies for his son’s preschool friends. I heartily reccomend them — brownie mix brownies never live up to their appealing looks, and these are just as easy, unless you do not own things like flour. The Baked brownies are also very good and just a little bit less effortless.
