1 1/2 pound of butter, 2 pounds of chocolate, countless cups of flour and sugar later, the brownie project is now officially over. phew! for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of sampling some of the brownies i made, let me provide some background on the project.

the seeds for the brownie project was planted in my head by a picture of some delectable mascarpone-chocolate brownies (with accompanying recipe) in one of my food + wine magazine. then came a ny times feature all about brownies and shortly before that was a sj mercury news article about a lost brownie recipe. was someone trying to tell me something?

i’ve also been reading julie and julia, the story of one woman’s quest to cook through the entire mastering the art of french cooking in a tiny nyc apartment in one year. now, i have no desire to do anything of that scale but the book planted the idea of a cooking project in my head and brownies seemed simple enough of an focus to start. so i took five very distinct brownie recipes and proceeded to make them all in a span of two weeks. now as most of you know, i’m not really a chocolate person so this experience was truly one in the name of…umm…science?

for reference, the brownie recipes were: supernatural brownies, french chocolate brownies, fudgy brownies, mascarpone-chocolate brownies, fudge brownies. they spanned the gamut from semi-sweet to unsweetened chocolate and cocoa powder, brown and white sugars, and one even used brewed espresso. but most of all, they were all very, very yummy.

i deem the project a success! here’s a picture of one of the projects:

brownies