Spoiler Alert: I am not sharing a recipe for chocolate-pistachio brownies today.
I thought adding pudding mix to a brownie recipe would fast-track me some moist, delicious pistachio brownies. All the experienced bakers out there are already chuckling softly.
I decided would be a good thing to do… I know not why. My husband and I watched four seasons of The Great British Bake-Off on Netflix and now, look who wants to try new things. This girl.
As it turns out, brownies are massively complicated to get right. According to my mom, even tried-and-true recipes can be temperamental to the slightest change in the process. Here’s how I fared.
I asked my husband if he had any actual pistachios I could garnish my photo with. He did not. Thus, fake ivy. Vaguely appropriate.
Color
I had hoped the brownies would pick up some of the green from the pudding mix. That would have been fun and interesting, right? But in the end, they are green the way my eyes are green–that is, if I wish and hope hard enough and the light is just right… they’re still just brown.
Flavor
I tested these on my husband, who didn’t know in advance what I was up to. Here was the ensuing-while-chewing conversation…
Him: “Mmm! Did you put cherries in these?”
Me: “No.”
Him: “Oh. I taste cherries.”
Me: “Pistachio.”
Him: “Pistachios!”
Me: “It’s pudding mix.”
Him: “Oh…. good job, honey!”
He’s great for my ego. 🙂
The pistachio flavor comes through, but unevenly. It’s both more and less that I imagined. it’s the darnedest thing.
Texture
The recipe I tweaked did not call for a leavening agent, and I didn’t use one. I had a feeling this meant they’d be “quite close-textured,” as Mary Berry of GBBO fame would say. And how did they, ahem, pan out?
Dense.
How dense?
London-fog dense. Dark-night-of-the-soul dense. Octopus-on-a-unicycle dense.
They do have a crumb, sort of, but overall they are extremely fudgy and rich.
The Verdict
My chocolate-pistachio brownies are edible, perhaps even tasty, but they aren’t what I wanted them to be–a chewy (not fudgy) brownie with an even, powerful hit of pistachio.
And if the next batch turns out a little green, I’ll be downright chuffed.
