Problem solving...

Recently I've been frustrated with my baking. Even embarrased at times... I've thought, "Am I losing my touch?" or "Am I not paying attention?" "What the heck is going on?" You see, everything I've been making the past couple of weeks has been gooey yet brown and that's just not my style. I mean, I feel like I've been getting to know my oven pretty well-- we're tight, we're buds -- I know he runs a bit on the warm side, he blows extremely hot air on my face if I'm too close when I open the oven door, and it really doesn't take long to preheat. But recently, he's been playing tricks. And I thought it was just me. You know, I try so many new recipes that I think, "Well maybe that's just how it's supposed to turn out." Several recent examples: I made cornbread for a friend. It was supposed to be made in a skillet (I don't have one), so when the bottom was still gooey I thought, oh, well maybe the point of the skillet is to get the bottom firmed up first then into the oven-- seems possible, right? Apple dumplings for my party-- another new recipe-- I thought, oh I guess I forgot it in the oven, and the bottom seemed runny but I didn't know if it was because of something I did wrong or just the 12 oz. of Mountain Dew the recipe called for. The recipe for this week -- review to come below-- was GOOEY brownies. So I, once again, thought, well maybe it's just the recipe, I mean they are supposed to be gooey, but I kept questioning, surely not THAT gooey?!?! Then last night, I made blondies. Now these I had made before. The top was a golden brown, so I let them cool because I was supposed to put frosting on top. When I cut into one to get one out for a friend-- more gooey dough! I turned the oven back on, waited, checked it, then it finally clicked: I haven't noticed the bottom heating element turn orange for a couple of weeks!!! I felt near the bottom and no heat was coming from it. Only from the top part of the oven. Crazy! So for the past couple weeks my things have not turned out right at all, I blamed them on the newness of recipes and myself-- but it's been my oven all along. Part of me says, a good baker would have noticed this much sooner. But what can I say? I finally found the problem. Fortunately, hubby has reported that the maintenance man has already come to fix the oven at home! So hopefully I can count on my oven again to turn out some good products after a couple weeks of being slightly disappointed about everything.

Whew! Well I didn't intend for this post to be long because I've been very busy at work. So the review will be many pictures with a few comments.

Put foil in your pan and grease it:





Mix up your ingredients in a bowl:





Add in the good stuff:






Some (shadowed) pumpkin...




Mix it all up then pour half of the brownie batter in the pan, followed by half a cup of the butterscotch ice cream topping:



Top with the remaining batter and bake for 50-60 min. Mine came out looking like this, much to my chagrin:





And was extremely gooey in the middle! I attributed it to the fact of the ice cream topping in the middle, but now I'm not entirely sure how gooey it was supposed to be **as noted from the first part of this post**. Regardless, my review: Once again, I will state, I'm not entirely sure how they would taste if baked correctly. But they were pretty good. Yes, you read that right. I was SO excited about these, but maybe I set my expectations too high? I don't think I used the entire amount of pumpkin, and I still felt like it was a little too much. Jeremiah said that there were too many flavors going on for just one brownie and --shockingly!-- I agreed. I think chocolate and butterscotch would be good, but adding in pumpkin as well as the cinnamon was a bit too much. I did get good reviews from work though. They seemed to really enjoy my extremely gooey brownies. One person ate 3 of them! They liked the combo of chocolate, pumpkin, and butterscotch. For that I was grateful because I had really started to get down on myself for all my 'weird' baking recently. I might make them again, but one of my favorite things about brownies is eating them warm. Sadly, when I ate these warm I really didn't like them. Even less than at room temperature! So, I might try them again with my correctly working oven. That might give me a better experience. I'll be very interested to hear mom and sister's review this time because hopefully they'll have a more 'accurate' experience!

To life... full of problem solving!