I love to bake. I especially love to bake brownies. I love the little squares of chocolate. I don’t like baking a pan of brownies for just one person though. Or a batch of cookies or cupcakes or ….well, you get the point. Baking typically produces way more than this girl can eat by herself. And let’s face it, baked goods only last so long before they lose their sparkle.

That being said, I only bake when I have people to bake for. Holidays are awesome for this. So are groups that ask you to bring a finger food to share. Tonight, I’m headed to another meetup that I found through meetup.com. This is the group’s first meetup so it should be interesting to see how it all starts. What’s the topic of this meetup? Well, it’s another craft group (one of my loves) that will be focusing on Pinterest projects (another of my loves). I’m so excited about this one that I invited Bestie K to come along with me. I’ll be sure to blog about it soon.

What about those brownies though? Well, they’re in the oven baking as I write. I chose to use the box variety this time simply because I did not have time to make them from scratch. I have added a little something extra to make them more delicious though.  See my steps for bettering boxed brownies below.

Mix your batter as instructed on the box, but add in a bit of vanilla extract (not much!) and chocolate chips. I just used what was left in this bag…it was about half a cup. This step can be adjusted to meet your needs. Then, stir your batter! I used a whisk rather than the spoon suggested on the box. I feel it does a better job.

Pour your batter into your desired pan. Make sure you spray it first like the box suggests! Then, get it ready for your oven (hopefully you’re better at following directions and have already preheated it. I accidentally forgot that step today.).

The lumps you see are the chocolate chips. They’ll melt well in the oven! Slide your brownies into the oven and let it work its magic!

When they come out of the oven, test them with the classic toothpick method, cut, and serve!

I’m linking up today with: