Van Brownies

I have a very, very overactive sweet tooth (as evidenced by the fact that when I went to my dentist uncle in Colorado a few days ago I had 22 cavities.  1. Yes, I'm serious.   2. Yes, that is possible [I didn't think it was either]. 3. Most adults have 28 teeth if you were wondering. 4. If you need any dental work done while you're in the Denver area, please let me know, my uncle is amazing!).  Anyway, my apparent horrible dental hygiene aside, I'm always craving sweets and while we were in New Mexico, Chelsea and I were really craving brownies.  My friend Adam had recently told me about cooking corn bread on his camp stove using a double boiler method and I was pretty sure this would work very well with brownies.  We decided to give it a try, and it was quite successful!  Here is the method we used, as well as some things we will try differently next time:

1. Get your brownie mix.  Obviously living in a van this is sensible instead of trying to make brownies from scratch.  We chose this mix from Trader Joe's not at all because it was fat free, but because the only ingredient it required was yogurt!  This was a bonus because we weren't sure if our brownie would cook all the way and we didn't really want salmonella if we ended up with raw egg in the middle of our brownie.  

 2. Prepare your brownie pan.  We put coconut oil on our pan to avoid a sticky mess while trying to remove our brownie.

3. Mix

 4. Batter in the pan, water in the pot.  Set the pan so it nestles into the pot (if possible, if you have pots and pans that fit together!)  Next time, we would make only half a batch at a time.  This would allow it to cook faster, and it would also prevent us from eating an entire pan of brownies in one sitting.

5. Put a lid on it and turn on the heat!  Get the water in the bottom pot boiling, but then make sure it turn it down or it will boil over and get your brownie soggy.  Patience is really helpful at this point.

6. BROWNIE!  YUM.

Our brownies turned out really tasty, but as usual we weren't really patient enough to allow them to cook fully.  They were a little sticky, but seriously delicious.  As we stuffed our faces, Chelsea laughed, "my lips are so sticky" through chocolate coated teeth.  "I can't swallow" I gargled back.  We then laughed until we cried and continued to shovel brownie into our faces despite the fact that we could barely breathe.  Clearly, we have a problem.