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Kara made some fabulous lemon brownies tonight. We thought we had the lemon bars recipe, but we don't. I know we could have looked it up, but Kara saw another recipe for lemon brownies and decided to make that instead. (I'm guessing this was originally from allrecipes.com.) She did this all by herself except for the oven part!
Lemon Brownies
Cream: 1/2 cup soft butter, 3/4 cup sugar, 2 eggs, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, and zest of 1/2 lemon. (If you're new to cooking, creaming something is much like creaming an opponent at a game--you whip them royally. In this case, you whip the ingredients royally, starting with the butter, to make them light and fluffy. Add each other ingredient one at a time and whip until all is nice and fluffy. Or if you're like me and just need to get the job done fast, throw it all in a bowl and whip away. It still comes out edible.)
Add and mix: 3/4 cup flour and 1/2 teaspoon baking powder.
Pour into a greased pan. The recipe says to use an 8" x 8". Since I'm not known as a recipe-follower, I used a 9" x 13" pan, and I like the thinner depth it had. Use what you like.
Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes. If you use the larger pan, check it sooner as it won't take quite as long to bake.
Let it cool while you make a glaze of: 3/4 cup powdered sugar, 1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice, the zest from the other 1/2 of the lemon. Spread it over the brownies when they're cool.
Kara brought these to the dinner table tonight in great style and served our family. Naturally, as the hostess of dessert, she was allowed to take the first bite. I love seeing my little girl blossom in so many ways, and I'm just bursting with pride if you can't tell!
Kal built a small steam engine with my dad from a kit. He demonstrated that tonight to his grandpa on the other side as they were here for dinner. I'm amazed at the little contraption. It actually works!
Some Good News
On to something I found online today, and probably everyone has already seen this, but I love that John Krasinski (who played Jim in The Office) is highlighting good stories to counteract all the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad stories that are in the lamestream media right now. Here he is on his Some Good News site: