How Not To Cook: Congo Bars

How Not to Cook: Post 2

So, small disclosure before I humiliate myself by describing how badly I messed up this dessert. I don’t purposely try to make dumb cooking mistakes, but I rely   on my posts to be based off my stupidity because no matter how hard I try, 99.99% of the time I’m still saying, “Whoops.” Just had to put that out there considering that at some point you’ll be saying to yourself, “Okay she had to have done that on purpose.” Nope, not even close.

So this recipe is actually my mother’s recipe, and congo bars are literally just a chocolate chip cookie in the form of a brownie, aka delicious and fattening. Luckily, I had a support system/in charge of fire extinguisher/guest star with me while making these bars, and that was my boyfriend, Ken. Along the way, he also gave me cooking tips, because he’s been cooking probably since he could walk. Due to this, he was not allowed to help me unless it was an emergency.

To start off, we had to pick a pan style, and I pulled out a metal pan and a glass pan. Even though the glass pan was the perfect size, Ken informed me that apparently you are not supposed to use glass pans unless it’s for things like casseroles because metal holds heat better. I considered to just ignore him, but I still wanted these to taste good so I went with the metal pan. The first step was to mix the butter and the brown sugar together, so I dumped both ingredients into my electric mixer and turned it on low. Now, if you can picture putting two sticks of butter straight out of the fridge and putting sugar on top, it doesn’t necessarily mix. Which is exactly what happened, and brown sugar flew out of the bowl and attacked me. Of course, instead of taking out the bowl and mixing by hand, I struggled to use a spatula and go back and forth between shoving down the butter with a spatula and timidly start the mixer again. From there, adding the rest of the ingredients was going pretty smooth, except apparently I’m too violent with cracking my eggs considering as I did this, Ken exclaimed, “Wow, you really murdered those eggs.” I had sprayed the pan, started the oven, and things were actually going surprisingly well. Of course, I spoke too soon. I read the recipe and saw that I needed a tablespoon of baking powder. So I measured, threw it in, and did a double take. The recipe asked for a teaspoon of baking powder, and I just put in a tablespoon. Luckily, the mixer wasn’t running, so I found myself struggling to scoop out baking powder, trying to visual see if I was leaving a teaspoon in or not. Crossing my fingers and hoping that I didn’t just ruin my dessert, I finished mixing and dumped the batter onto the pan, spreading it evenly and popped it into the oven.

Overall, the bars actually turned out really good, and they didn’t even stick to the pan. The edges weren’t burnt or too crispy, and the center baked perfectly. Yet, I did learn to always double check the recipe and the measurements, and that butter straight from the fridge is probably not going to mix that well. This experience went a lot better than previous ones, probably because I had someone breathing down my neck and correcting me, but I’m surprised and happy about the results. Honestly, I’m just grateful I didn’t get food poisoning, or give it to the rest of my family.