Once again asked to test out a packaged product, I cast my food snobbery aside and allowed the box into my kitchen. This time it was the Jacques Torres Pure Bliss Fudge Brownie Mix ($12.95 at mrchocolate.com). Making brownies from scratch isn’t exactly rocket science so I was curious to see if this mix was even worth it. The brownies were super simple to make: some melting of chocolate, a bit of elbow grease, a couple of eggs and voila! The brownies turned out thick and fudgy and tasted great, and that was before they were even technically finished. I can’t say I saved much time with this mix (only cutting out the time it takes to measure the dry ingredients like flour, cocoa and sugar) because of the glazing step that occurs once the brownies have cooled. On top of a decadent fudgy brownie Mr. Torres has you apply a thick chocolate ganache layer (melted chocolate with whipping cream) that I’ll liken to the upscale cousin of the top of a hostess cupcake. All in all, I found it to be a delicious end result. I could taste the quality of the chocolate and the (very) few brownies that made it through the weekend stayed moist and delicious. While I’ll likely return to making brownies from scratch this mix is certainly OK in my book as a decadent once in a while sweet treat. — Erica P.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 5:04 am and is filed under cooking, gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.