In about 45 minutes, you and your partner can prepare and cook homemade brownies. Its a lot easier than you might think, and can give you a chance to do something productive, fun, and tasty with your partner.

The first step is to get the proper ingredients. If you don’t already have all of these items, take your partner to the store with you and do some shopping together! Shopping can be a blast when done with someone you have fun with.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup oil or melted butter. Melted butter generally makes the best brownies.
• 1 cup sugar.
• 1 teaspoon vanilla. Imitation vanilla tastes just as good as the real stuff, and is way cheaper.
• 2 eggs. Large eggs of any color will work great.
• 1/2 cup flour. Get all purpose white flour.
• 1/3 cup Hershey’s cocoa. An off-brand is probably fine, but I’ve never tried it.
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder.
• 1/4 teaspoon salt. Table salt (iodized), sea salt, Kosher salt, or any other kind of salt is great.
• Cooking spray. You can also use Crisco. This will keep your brownies from sticking to the pan.
• Toothpicks. You’ll use these to see if it is done.
• Camera. You’ll want pictures of the whole process from start to finish.

If you really want an amazing treat, splurge a little and buy some vanilla ice cream and a jar of hot fudge topping. If you and your partner like them, some sprinkles can be fun, too.

Get your oven preheating to 350°.

Blend the melted butter, sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl. In other words, dump the stuff in a bowl and mix it up until you can’t tell the ingredients apart from each other. Next, add the eggs.

If the oven isn’t preheated yet, wait until it is to add the rest of the ingredients. The baking powder reacts with other ingredients in the mix to cause your brownies to rise. If you add it to the mix and then have to wait for the oven to heat, then the brownies won’t rise as much as they should.

Once the oven is preheated, add in the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Mix everything together until you can’t tell the ingredients apart from each other but don’t over mix! When it is done, the batter should be fairly thick and should have small lumps in it. Be sure to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl while mixing.

Grease a glass or metal pan (9″x9″ works best) with cooking spray or Crisco. Make sure you get the bottoms and the sides. Pour the batter in, and wiggle the pan around to spread the batter evenly.

Pop the pan into the preheated oven, and cook for 20-25 minutes. You can check on them at around 20 minutes by inserting a toothpick into the middle of the brownies. If it comes out fairly clean, then they are done. If it comes out with brownie batter on it, then you need to keep waiting.

While your brownies are cooking, take the time to clean up the kitchen with your partner. You can have some fun, too. Use your fingers to eat some brownie batter from the mixing bowl or put some batter on your partner’s nose.

When they are finally ready, pull the pan out and set it on the stove. Let the brownies cool for 5 or 10 minutes before cutting them, or they’ll stick to the knife and fall apart. For the most enjoyment, get a big bowl, put a couple brownies in it along with a few scoops of vanilla ice cream and some hot fudge, grab two spoons, and enjoy!