The Brownie Experience

This is a charming book reminiscent of books put out by smaller publishing houses a couple of decades ago - a bit egocentric in a positive way. As I opened the book to the hand lettered introduction, I imagined the author living in the hills around Berkeley, CA puttering around her organic garden in the morning and baking these brownies in the afternoon. The recipes look delicious and the hand lettering is somehow sweet to me. I guess it makes me think about the recipe book I'd like to make for my family (though I'd use a charming hand-written-looking FONT in Word). Besides, chocolate, brownies, nuts, how can you go wrong?

This is truly a brownie experience! More than 100 recipes involving some 62 different ingredients and combo variants thereof. This is brownie heaven!Brownie the author aptly defines as "a sqare or rectangle of rich, usually chocolate cake often containing nuts or other crunchy morsels; can be chewy, cakelike, or fluffy; thin or thick; frosted or plain' baked or unbaked."And there you have it, so much to try and then taste. There is neat section of Health Conscious Brownies, which are the few I've tried so far: Papaya Paradise Browines, Pina Colada Brownies, Luscious Avocado Nut Brownies, and on and on it goes.There is elegant, and wheel, and non-chocolate, and a brownie orgy extravagance, and "oh, my" is this stuff great!The author on top of all this brownie creativity does all the illustrations and unique calligraphy.A treat from front to back, and then some. Try this with cold glass of milk. Now this is living.

I have owned this brownie cookbook since 1985. I have made all the recipes, and find myself returning to it again and again. The illustrations and lettering are beautiful, and each recipe is very reliable. This would make a nice gift for anyone, and an even better one for yourself!