Chronicles of a Recipe Fail: Vintage Brownie Saga

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I knew when I started this recipe project that I would have a few misses, and the brownies turned out to be my first miss. The flavor was not so bad, but the texture was just a giant fail. And to top it off, the chocolate conversion was off and there was no vanilla on the list. Oh well, it is a very unique recipe and if you want to give it a try, maybe you’ll have better luck than I did. This is a typed recipe with the name Velma Wilch, who I discovered was a former co-worker of my grandmother’s in the 1970s. You know the 70s, they were all about odd food combinations.

It took me a bit to find plain instant mashed potatoes at the store. But I did finally find some with just butter/salt rather than garlic, cheese, or other additions.

I mixed the 3/4 cup potatoes with 3/4 cup boiling water

Then mixed in the butter and sugar

Then we ran into a roadblock. I added the eggs, but I didn’t have any baking chocolate on hand, so the recipe says “2 squares of chocolate or 4 teaspoons cocoa.” That is definitely not an equivalent measurement. Here is the back of my Hershey’s cocoa can. It says 3 tablespoons of cocoa plus 1 tablespoon shortening or oil is equivalent to 1 square. I have no idea where the 4 teaspoons came from, those would not have been very chocolaty at all.

So added 6 tablespoons of cocoa and 2 tablespoons of oil, along with the eggs.

Stirred in flour and then added the nuts. I also added a teaspoon of vanilla because I thought that it really needed the balance.

Put it in an 8 inch square greased pan

Baked in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes

Unfortunately, the texture of these brownies could only be described as “mushy.” They didn’t have the fudgy texture, nor a cake texture that you would expect from a brownie. We did eat them, and the flavor was decent, but it was difficult to get around the texture. It is not a recipe I would make again, as I’m not sure what the instant potatoes really add to the recipe.