Brownies recipe!

Well, we have to start with something. I told Katie that she needs to post some of her book reviews here. Hopefully she'll do that soon. But for now, here's a recipe for brownies. Take these to a party and watch them disappear! This is slightly adapted from a recipe my mom found in a Readers Digest. Enjoy!

INGREDIENTS
1 cup of butter, softened (2 sticks)
2 cups of sugar
1/3 cup of cocoa
2 tsp. vanilla
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups of flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

INSTRUCTIONS
Grease a 9x13" pan, or a 1" deep baking sheet. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix first three ingredients. Add eggs and vanilla and mix. Add flour and salt. At this point I usually add some melted chocolate chips. This makes for extra fudginess (muahaha). If you want to do this, take about 1 1/2-2 cups of chocolate chips (any kind you like) and heat them in the microwave for 35 seconds at a time, taking them out and stirring them before putting them in for another 35 seconds. This should melt them fairly quickly. Add them to the batter and stir it up! You can add anything you like, chocolate chips, nuts, etc. Play with it!

Put them in the oven for about 20 minutes. (If you added the melted chocolate be sure to add another 5 or 10 minutes).
They should be done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Happy baking!