I don’t get red velvet cake. I mean, there a lot of things I spend my time lazily wondering about — why babies insist on hunting and eating the dirt off your carefully swept (I guess not) carpet, why I have not been able to persuade my husband to get me a kitchen maid (err, dirty dishes maid) Downton Abbey style, why people eat lima beans, who was the unlucky person(s) who found out the hard way (umm, death) that certain foods are poisonous, why men loathe using hampers, or why I should splurge to get our little guy this  — and every once in a while my mind gets stuck on red velvet, baffling me to no end.

It’s teetering on the edge of being chocolate yet has such little cocoa it’s as if it is clinging to its vanilla roots with every ounce of flour only to be dyed the most vibrant shade of red. I’m getting the impression whoever came up with red velvet was a very fickle person. No, but seriously, what is the point of red velvet? I just don’t understand. If it is not loved for its strong, decided flavor camp, which it has none, is it the velvety, soft texture? Surely we all know, this is not the only or best cake with such a wonderful plush interior. If that’s not it, perhaps its loyal following is due simply to its color, something you definitely will not hear me complain about — but does that really have anything to do with the cake at all? Why not just dye a really good chocolate cake red, or your favorite orange cake (blood orange anyone?) red.

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I have several obsessions in the kitchen that I am wary to break free from since that would mean less of them and more of things like kale or squash or allthethingsIloathe. So today, it should not be surprising that I am bringing to you perhaps one of my favorite obsessions: brown butter. Obsession, as in, would use a brown butter scented bath soap if I could find one–and yes, I have looked. I have prattled on and on about it all over these pages, fawning, yearning, drooling, even shunning you away so I could hoard it all to myself. But I’ve had a revelation. Probably after tearing up over the insane adorableness of my little Oliver Twist-ish child (thanks to a grandparent of course), but none the less a revelation: that I need to share, so that my son will learn to share, because I am positive he will not want to share anything resembling these blondies.

It’s taken me over a week of contemplation to finally come to terms with the fact that you should add these to your indulgences (indulgences? Or, missing element in the basic food groups?) but I reserve the right to keep the peanut butter brownies to myself, for now at least. A few more days of sending my 3 month son off to work and I’m sure I will be wallowing in them as well and needing someone (read: you) to sit down and help me eat them as I sob that he is already grown up and it happened way too quickly.

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Two weeks ago my husband came home, plunked the mail down on the desk and proceeded to tell me about his day. Nothing unusual or overly frustrating, at least I hope that’s what he was saying. After about 3.7 seconds into the conversation my attention was immediately diverted to the Bon Appetit magazine peeking out from under the Gold’s Gym flyer and the bills, which should frankly be sent to someone else’s house and not mine. I pulled it out from the clutter and said  “mmmhmmm” as if I were listening to anything he was saying and without warning I almost ran out of the house barefoot and jacketless because the cover on this magazine had the most fudgy looking brownies I have ever seen and (let me get to the good part) when I flipped to the recipe, it said “brown butter”. Brown Butter! I needed ingredients, and I needed them fast…

But patient ole’ me, practicing my “good wife qualities“, remained calm, put the magazine back down, let my husband finish his story (which really was good) and sat on my hands until my attention could be fully devoted to my magazine. From my first glance at these brownies my mind was made up — I was willing to get the worst case of frostbite ever seen by the human race by prancing around town barefoot to gather ingredients for these brownies — that is how much I wanted them, need them, had to have them or I would die.

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Ughh. Enough already with the Test Kitchen, the Cooks Illustrated, the Country Cooks. They always get it right, always. I don’t see how you can be that reliable all the time. So what if they gave you perfect recipes for soft pillow-y gnocchi, or warm pita pockets filled with gryo fixings, or too-big-for-your-bun-delicious burgers, or give you the secret to re-nigging all previous statements of hatred toward chicken cutlets, or the Kill Bill approach we take when eating their hummus, or the creamy coleslaw that is deceptively not creamy, or the the takes-so-long-you-wonder-why-your-doing-this-and-then-you-taste-it-southern pulled pork. With this many success stories I really can’t do much complaining. Not even if they take out all the romance of cooking, because frankly I love reliable. Which is what they are. They give the straight, simple basics of how and why recipes work and I know I will always get what they promised. So forgive me if I seem particularly partial towards their recipes of late, but I’m just not in the mood for fickle, picky recipes that won’t give me brownies when I need brownies. I mean, I need brownies.

It’s that time — sorry men, you won’t know what I’m talking about — when my body is signaling uncontrollably for butter and sugar and, and chocolate. Yes! Me wanting chocolate, it must be that time, ya know that time every twenty-eight days brings. The time you loathe, yet you know your chocolate meter is going off the chart meaning eating chocolate will feel good, yet you feel bad about your favorite skirt that might not fit as perfectly as it has when you haven’t gorged out on chocolate, yet, you get to eat chocolate. I mean seriously, you’ve got to weigh the pros and cons here.

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In preparation for a break from all things deemed “unhealthy” — which I’m sure will change when I get a craving for loaded baked potatoes and the like such as — this week’s grocery list consists entirely of anti-healthy items.  Though we are three months late on the getting into shape bandwagon, we have decided after looking at the scale that it is much needed. This week is a last hurrah, a bon voyage, the last supper. So besides the truffled pastas and the fat-filled eggs these last remaining days we have made the solemn vow to eat whatever whenever we want….ok we don’t want to make more work for ourselves, but we will be doing the cheesecake swirled brownies before we no longer can.

Whoever married chocolate and cheesecake should be applauded. It ranks up there with the big boys like chocolate and peanut butter. Because these brownies can hold their own. These are not too rich nor too sweet, nor do they overload you with chocolate.  They have gooey, soft chocolate centers with creamy slightly sweetened cheesecake weaving itself throughout. And they of course fit the bill for “unhealthy”, though we can try to convince ourselves that it has protein since there are two eggs  and a yolk — right?

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