Early Morning Baking

Every weekday morning at my house starts at 5:00 am. My oldest daughter (DragonNight) needs to catch the bus for school at 6:30, my husband (the Redneck) leaves the house before 6:00 am for work and my youngest (Little Bigfoot) must catch the bus by 7:30. This means I'm up organizing and making sure that everyone has what they need, to help them be successful through the day. It is also a time where I often can get some knitting time in, as the kids are eating or between buses. I sometimes use this time to do fresh baking for their lunches. I find I often have more inclination and energy to do this first thing in the morning, than I have in the evenings, which are often full of homework or meetings.


My favorite thing to bake first thing in the morning are my Easy Peanut Butter cookies, but since only one of the girls like those, unless I'm planning on baking 2 different items in the morning, I often need other ideas. It is often difficult to bake one dessert item that both the girls will like; one is addicted to chocolate, but doesn't like anything crunchy, the other one doesn't mind crunchy but isn't that fond of chocolate and doesn't like peanut butter. Neither one is fond of oatmeal cookies and only tolerate sugar cookies in order to decorate them. *Yes, I have very particular children who know what they don't want, seldom do they know what they do want though.* This morning I decided that I was tired of cookies and so scanned my Hershey's Cocoa Cookbook ©1969 for a cake or brownie recipe and found this one (see below). It had a minimal amount of flour, so I decided to try it gluten-free so that I would be able to enjoy a bite or two before the girls eat them all. I'm going to try another batch later today using coconut oil and egg substitutes to see how they turn out to make it a true allergy friendly treat. I'll update you with those results later, for now, here is the recipe for Quick & Easy Brownie Bites.

Quick & Easy Brownie Bites

Adapted by Tandy Imhoff from Hershey’s Cocoa Cookbook

[Printable Recipe]

½ c melted butter or vegetable oil

201 g (1 c) sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

20 g Tapioca Starch/Flour

48 g Brown Rice Flour

32 g (⅓ c) cocoa

¾ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

Preheat oven 350°. Grease 24 mini-muffin tins or a 9 x 9 baking pan. Blend butter/oil, sugar and vanilla well, in a medium mixing bowl. Add eggs and beat well with a spoon. In a separate bowl, combine flours, cocoa, baking powder & salt. Gradually add flour mixture to egg mixture, mix until well blended. Gently spoon batter into muffing tin, filling ⅔ full. Bake in pre-heated oven for 15 – 20 minutes or until they start to pull away from the edges or test done (toothpick method). Cool in pan, sprinkle with confectioner's sugar or frost as desired.

Yield: 20 - 24 mini brownie bites/16 cut squares

*You can substitute ½ c of all purpose flour for the Tapioca Starch & Brown Rice Flour if you are not gluten sensitive.