Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

With the holiday season in full gear, I’ve been busy making side dishes for potlucks and sugary, calorie-laden goodies for friends and neighbors (though sometimes my procrastination causes me to present a decorative bag of red and green M&Ms and “cleverly” declare that they’re homemade, ha ha, let’s concentrate on how clever I am and not how lazy I am, okay?).

Cool-weather potlucks are easy because I fulfill my duty as a Midwesterner to make green bean casserole. Throw some green beans, cream of mushroom soup, milk, and some French’s fried onions together and heat until bubbly. Best served with loud discussion, poultry, and wine. And an extra can of those fried onions because who can eat just one (can)?

My new favorite sugary treat is also easy to make, but a little hard to share: Cranberry-Almond Ghirardelli Brownies. Mostly from a box.

My family never really baked from scratch, so I didn’t start out with a box full of secret family cookie and cake recipes. I started out with a box of Betty Crocker brownie mix.

I’m not a huge chocolate eater—something related to an overdose of fundraiser chocolate bars when I was eight— but having a box of brownies on hand for chocolate emergencies is standard protocol. So when I found a big 4-pack of Ghirardelli brownie mix at Sam’s Club, I decided to give the fancy mix a try. With the standard recipe, they’re really good. But if you add almonds and cranberries, they are AMAZING brownies.* And I don’t even really like cranberries.**

Would you like the recipe? I’ll walk you through step by step with some commentary (because I’m feeling clever). Let’s start with the ingredients.

Your brownie base is the good-on-its-own Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate brownie mix, sold individually in grocery stores or in a Quadruple Pack at wholesale clubs.  The other ingredients needed are oil, water, whole cranberries, sliced almonds, and an egg. I forgot to take a photo of the egg. Sorry, I decided not to recreate the moment for the sake of this blog. I think you can imagine what a carton of eggs looks like, m’kay?

That’s Canola oil, which is healthier than standard Vegetable oil. I recently learned that “Canola” was originally a brand name given to it by its hippie creators. That’s right, there is no such thing as a Canola plant. “Canola” is short for Canadian Oil, Low Acid. Booyah, genius! Those Canadians sure love to put “Canada” in everything they can. Canada Dry, Canada Goose, Canada Flag, etc. I bet Canadian citizens’ birth certificates show that every baby’s name begins with Canada. Actually, my dad’s side of the family is Canadian. I don’t think that last part about baby names is true.

Preheat the oven to 325°F.

Follow the instructions on the back of the box and put the brownie mix, egg, water, and oil into a bowl. I used this nice vintage mixing bowl that originally belonged to my Canadian-born grandmother. The colored fruit has mostly worn off the outside, but it’s the only bowl that looked decent on my crazy marble counter that the previous homeowner chose.

Mix it up with a spatula (you might call it a rubber scraper, which I guess is okay). If some of the batter accidentally falls onto your finger or into your mouth, go ahead and enjoy it. It’s a proven fact that salmonella from a raw egg won’t affect females with a raging case of PMS. Because it doesn’t DARE go there.

Pause for a moment to watch your cat Phoebe, who is sitting on her favorite perch (the lid to the garbage can), sneak her paws onto the counter to steal a piece of plastic from the bag of brownie mix. She’s not as stealthy as she thinks she is. Throw the plastic away and distract her with a more appropriate cat toy, like a “homemade” green M&M, and then get back to work.

Scrub the sink so that people won’t think you’re a disgusting slob when they see a photo of it. Rinse the cranberries however you see fit. I like to use water and a colander.

Let’s talk for a moment about the cranberries. In the fall and early winter, bags of whole, fresh cranberries start to pop up in grocery stores. You can easily find buy-one-get-one-free sales, and I recommend that you take advantage of them because you can freeze one bag to use someday in the future. For this recipe, you could probably use dried cranberries or maybe canned cranberries (not the canned jelly) in a pinch. But if you’re springing for the slightly more expensive Ghirardelli brownie mix, why not go for the primo taste of fresh berries?

Speaking of fresh berries, you should throw out any bad berries you find while rinsing. Good cranberries are hollow and will actually bounce when tossed on a hard surface. Bad cranberries look and feel different, like the one on the right in this next photo.

Some cranberries will be a little squishy but are probably okay for baking in brownies. What an artsy photograph this is! (You should see how crappy the other 34 turned out.)

Now that the cranberries are rinsed and your almonds are sliced (because they come that way in the giant bag you purchased from Sam’s Club), add them to the brownie mix. I used 1 cup of cranberries and 1 cup of sliced almonds—half in the mix, half sprinkled on top—during this photo shoot. Unless you’re a huge fan of almonds, you might want to consider reducing the almond level to between 0.5 and 0.75 cups.

Catch Phoebe in the act again—this time because of a stray almond. Sigh. She thinks the “no cats on the counter” rule doesn’t apply if she still has one or both feet touching the top of the garbage can.

Once the cranberries and almonds are mixed in, pour the batter into your greased pan of choice. I only have one 13×9″ glass pan, so that’s what I use.

Sprinkle the remaining almonds over the top of the batter.

Now put your pan into the pre-heated oven (which was ready several minutes ago due to the photo shoot taking longer than expected) and bake for the amount of time specified on the back of the box in accordance with your type of pan. Don’t overbake them. I actually prefer mine a little underbaked because then they’re nice and gooey.

Let them cool for a little while, then cut them with a sharp knife (for cleaner edges). Shove a large piece in your mouth to “taste test.” If it’s too delicious to share, declare that “the brownies didn’t turn out right” and make another pan for the others if you’re so inclined. Any brownie that makes it to a fully cooled-of state should be stored in an airtight container.

Serve it with a scoop of Breyer’s vanilla bean ice cream, and… I’m sorry, I’m about to pass out from the happy food pleasure that’s overtaking my imagination. I better go cut myself another chunk of that batch of brownies that “didn’t turn out right.”

*My mom had actually been brownie-free for quite some time (due to allergies) until she happily discovered that she could eat all the ingredients in the Ghirardelli mix when she last visited me. Many thanks to her for the add-in recipe idea and for feeding me these brownies at Thanksgiving despite my initial objection to the cranberries themselves.

**I bit into a whole cranberry while I was rinsing them to make sure that my dislike for cranberries was not just a holdover from my stubborn childhood tastes. This was a bad idea—it was incredibly sour and disgusting, and sent pains of bitterness shooting into my bloodstream. Granted, I do have a heightened sensitivity to bitterness. Even if you like cranberries, though, I think they need to be mixed with some sort of sugar to counteract the sour bitterness.