The whiff of baking brownies is one that sends every kid running for the kitchen. Believe it or not, you can actually save quite a bit of money on brownies with a secret frugal tip. Call it baking brownies the frugal way!
The most economical way to bake brownies, of course is by scratch. You can find lots of tasty recipes over at the Food blog. Find a recipe that you like and then apply this tip to save money.
Sure you could use a store bought mix to bake brownies, but unless you can combine coupons and deals (see the Deals blog), that mix is really going to cost you. When we were showing our house, I often baked brownies from a mix to make the house smell yummy and homey, but the cost of the mixes really added up. And home made, in my opinion, just tastes better.
Chocolate, of course, is one of the key ingredients in brownies. Most brownie recipes call for unsweetened baking chocolate. While this is a good choice, it is actually pretty expensive. Regular baking chocolate can cost as much as $6 a pound, and those imported gourmet baking chocolate bars can often be twice as much!
But did you know that there is a sneaky substitute for that expensive baking chocolate? You can substitute unsweetened cocoa powder for the baking chocolate? It is easy to do and will save you 50 percent or more off of the cost of your brownies.
You can use the cocoa powder as a substitute in any brownie recipe. This is the way you do it. For each ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate called for in a recipe, use three tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder with one tablespoon of vegetable oil. That is all there is to it. And, as an added bonus, you don’t have to worry about melting the chocolate for your recipe.
If you do a lot of baking, unsweetened cocoa powder can be bought in bulk at the warehouse stores or at some baking supply stores, to bring your savings even higher.
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