Nabisco Chocolate Brannies Recipe

Because any links I've given previously don't seem to go past the list of ingredients, here's the recipe for Chocolate Brannies, made with Nabisco 100% Bran Cereal.  (It came from a magazine ad for the cereal, a lot of years ago.)

Whole Grain Brannies

1 cup Nabisco 100% Bran Cereal, or another brand (like All-Bran)
2/3 cup milk
4 squares Baker's Unsweetened Chocolate, OR 4 oz. semisweet chocolate chips (and less sugar)
1/2 cup margarine
1 1/2 cups sugar, or less, especially if you are using semisweet chocolate chips
3 eggs
1 cup whole wheat flour (or unbleached or all-purpose work fine too)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 9-inch square pan.

Mix cereal and milk, let stand five minutes to soften.

Heat chocolate and margarine together, in microwave or on low heat. When melted and smooth, stir in sugar.

Beat eggs.

Combine chocolate/margarine, cereal/milk, and eggs. Stir in flour.

Spread in greased 9-inch pan.  Bake 30-40 minutes or until done. Cool and cut in squares.

What's for supper? Kind of Philippines-Cuban fusion

What's for supper tonight?

Chicken Thighs Adobo, which includes carrots and onion (from our freezer experiment)
Reheated sweet potatoes
Rice
Cuban Bread from the Tightwad Gazette  (Dollygirl and I baked some this morning)

Oranges, bananas
Dangerous Chocolate Cake in a Cereal Bowl

Last night's supper menu: Something sustaining

Mr. Fixit's Favourite Meatloaf, from the Betty Crocker Cookbook
Sweet potatoes
Spinach tortellini
Bean salad (made with a can of romano beans and a can of green beans)

Choice of: no-bake brownies, blackberry crisp, oranges, yogurt

Frugal but fattening

A bits-and-pieces dessert: you need vanilla ice cream, hot fudge sauce, and a lot of broken bits of brownie.

No, I didn't have a kitchen disaster, although that could get you there as well. But recently I made a large pan of regular-old-brownies for company, and I had a lot of little bits and ends that didn't cut well. I broke them all up--not into crumbs, but into small pieces--froze them in a plastic container, and then thawed them just before making dessert. I made the fudge sauce while I was making dinner too.

And you can figure out the rest: a small helping of brownie bits in the bottom of the bowl, a scoop of ice cream on top, and sauce on top of that. We felt completely decadent.

The DHM's Five Things, and Cooking By the Campfire

The Five Things part is a meme that the Deputy Headmistress sent our way. Cooking by the Campfire comes at the end, so hold on.

5 Things in my Refrigerator:
1. Head of broccoli
2. Package of tofu
3. A last bit of smoked Jarlsberg cheese (one of my favourites)
4. Half a pan of no-bake brownies (recipe below)
5. Last night's leftover Scoobi-Doos (coloured macaroni spirals)

5 Things in my Closet
1. Framed family photos we don't have anywhere to hang
2. A couple of toys that are "doing time" (confiscated)
3. The kids' too-big-too-small shoe box
4. About three dresses that need to be dry-cleaned
5. and two that need to be ironed.

5 Things in my Purse:
1. Library cards
2. Loonies and twonies
3. Boring stuff like keys.
4, 5. Dustballs.

5 Things in My Car
1. Mr. Fixit
2. Mama Squirrel
3. The Apprentice
4. Ponytails
5. Crayons

No-Bake Brownie Recipe (from Vegetarian Times)

I've doubled this recipe to make enough for an 8-inch square pan, but you could always cut it in half again.

In a saucepan, combine 6 tbsp. powdered milk with 2/3 cup water. (Or use regular milk.) Heat the milk, not to boiling but just quite warm. Stir in approximately 12 oz. chocolate chips (if you're short, you can make up the difference with a couple of unsweetened chocolate squares, or cut back on the total amount a bit), and stir just until melted and smooth. Stir in about 2 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs, and press into a greased square pan. (The original recipe called for nuts, but we leave those out). Chill until set, or just set aside if you don't have a refrigerator (the recipe was part of an article on camp food). Cut in squares. [2012 update: we have also discovered that these taste good if you stir in some mini-marshmallows at the end.  More like S'more.]

Oh, the wonders of the Internet: I knew that recipe I'd clipped was from a 1995 VT article by Jasmine Star, and a Google search for her name brought up the whole article online. It has lots of tips, grocery lists and recipes for campfire cooking, particularly for vegetarians. (I have not cooked over a campfire myself for a long time--we are pretty much homebody squirrels these days, and the closest we get is cooking over a barbecue.)