It’s Time for the Emergency Two-Ingredient Cake
I almost always have a box of Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Brownie cookie mix in my pantry. I have about five pounds of this stuff at the moment. (You can buy seven pounds at a time from a restaurant supply store, which is the amount Newton A.A. gave me for my birthday.)
I really love brownies, but – even with how easy it is to make boxed chocolate brownies – I don’t always want to make a whole batch, mainly because I’ll eat that batch in about 36 hours. Fortunately, the brownie mix can be used to make a chocolate cake for one. You just need a little sour cream.
I started this pie with 1/4 cup brownie mixture and 2 tablespoons of water and that was fine, but then our editor-in-chief Joel Cunningham mentioned that his wife makes a very similar treat using yogurt instead of water. I didn’t have yogurt, but I had sour cream (because I just have to always have it at home), so I churned this combination up.
It turned out beautifully. Sour cream gives the cake a little more consistency and a pleasant milky flavor. If you make a mixture with chocolate chips, you get an effect that is almost like a lava cake.
You can make a pie in the microwave or deep fat fryer (or other small convection oven), but a deep fat fryer will make the best pie. Microwaved cakes (for example, right above this paragraph) come out slightly damp and elastic (but not bad); deep-fryer pies (like the one at the top of this blog) come out moist but fluffy with a thin, shiny crust on top.
Regardless of how you cook it, the proportions are the same. Simply combine 1/4 cup brownie mixture and 2 tablespoons sour cream in an oiled mug or mold and stir with a fork until smooth, then microwave for one minute or deep fryer for 10 minutes. 350 ℉ each. Let cool for a minute or two before enjoying. Repeat as necessary.