Guest Author - Deborah Markus

A friend of mine and I get together regularly. She called me one morning shortly before one of our visits, with the good news that she was baking brownies.

"They're from a mix," she said apologetically. "They'll probably be horrible."

I assured her that although chocolate in bar form is occasionally inedible, it's been my experience that there's really no such thing as a bad brownie. And mix-brownies tend to be very fudgy and sweet, which is always good. "Well, it's not just a grocery store brownie mix, anyway," she said. "It's Barefoot Contessa."

An hour or two later, I was able to try some of these brownies. Let me back up and say that ever since I started baking three-chocolate brownies, others have tended to taste a little lackluster to me. So I was prepared to be polite.

I didn't have to be. The Contessa's brownies were incredible. They were fudgy, rather than cakey -- brownie lovers will know what I mean by this. They were deep and sweet. They were even richer than mine, and that's going some. These literally oozed butter. Every chocophile must decide for herself whether this is stepping into too-much-of-a-good-thing territory.

So the finished product is wonderful. Let's talk about getting to it.

This is a mix. It's a Barefoot Contessa mix; but nevertheless, I think I'm on fairly solid ground when I say that in general, people do not turn to mixes for the best possible product. They turn to them for convenience.

People who are baking from a mix are often inexperienced cooks. Again, in general I think it's safe to say that if they knew how to bake, they'd be doing just that, rather than purchasing a powdered product that does most of the work for them.

My friend is more of a savory cook than a pastry chef, but she's perfectly comfortable in the kitchen. Nevertheless, I got two worried calls from her while she was attempting to put together the Barefoot Contessa brownies.

One was because the mix requires you to melt a stick of your own butter with a big of the Contessa's chocolate chunks. "They say to use a bowl over a pan of simmering water," she said dubiously.

Melting chocolate is an iffy proposition. I do it on a fairly regular basis, but always with a little trepidation. If you melt it over water -- with a bowl as the Contessa suggests, or in a more conventional double boiler -- you run the risk of water getting into the chocolate as it melts. If this happens, you have to throw it out and start all over again, because it stiffens up and won't incorporate into your other ingredients, no matter how much you heat and stir it.

I prefer melting chocolate in a heavy-bottomed pot over very low heat, stirring constantly. This requires a confidence, and possibly a pan, that a novice may not have. The chocolate can scorch if you don't stay with it.

Either method runs the risk of a panful of unusable chocolate. And if you're baking from a mix, it's not as if you can just grab another bar and start again.

Buying a mix should make the purchaser feel a certain security in a predictable outcome. If you have to melt the chocolate yourself for a mix that costs as much as if you'd gone ahead and bought yourself some really good baking chocolate, I begin to wonder if it's worth it.

My friend went ahead and microwaved the chocolate and butter, just to be safe. The Contessa does say in parentheses that you can do that.

My friend also called because the baking pan required "buttering and flouring," and she wasn't familiar with that procedure and (not being a baker) wasn't sure she had any flour. Let me point out again that these are really good brownies, before I go on to say that in addition to what you pay for the mix itself, you're also required to buy eggs, butter, and flour in order to prepare them.

And the directions really assume that you know something about baking. Aside from what I've already pointed out, the preparer is called upon to mix the ingredients with the paddle attachment of an electric mixer. My electric mixer doesn't even have one of those. Again, in parentheses, she says that you can just use a hand mixer, but it comes across as the second-best option, and that might worry an unsure baker.

I never thought I could give a mixed review to an outstanding brownie. I just find it odd that the creator of a mix requires the purchasers to already know how to bake brownies -- and still expects them to want to buy a mix.