Ill-fated peanut brownies

I decided to make some peanut brownies this morning. I don’t usually bake that early but Stephen had mentioned last night that he felt like some, so as I had all the ingredients, I decided to make a batch.

I wish I hadn’t.

Part of the recipe suggested using soft butter, so I did what I have done many times before, and that was to place the measured butter in the kitchen whizz bowl and into the microwave for softening. This time, the softening didn’t go as planned. I melted the centre piece of the bowl, pushing it out of shape, so that the rest of the attachments can no longer fit onto this piece. In other words, my kitchen whizz is now inoperable. Damn.

This gadget is the one I use for everything and especially with Christmas coming up as I make the stuffing, the cheese cake base and filling and any baking I do, with it. Whilst the hand-held electric mixer can do the cakes, it doesn’t do the stuffing, for example. Yes, I can make this by hand, but we are now in the age where we have gadgets for everything.

I remember once my two builder boys telling me they couldn’t do work for me because they didn’t have their nail guns or drills with them. We had plenty of hammers and screw drivers. I guess I now understand where they were coming from but at the time, I thought the hammers would have worked just as well. Why put in all that extra work when one knows one doesn’t need to?

I don’t know why the plastic melted this morning, when I have done this same procedure many times, with no ill-effects. Was it because it was early morning and we had more power? Yes, that does seem to happen sometimes. I know the toast cooks quicker some mornings. Or was it because the butter was frozen and so I gave it a minute instead of the 30 seconds I generally give it? I think this latest assumption is probably the correct one.

There was already a broken piece on this whizz. It snapped off soon after I bought it, but with care, I was still able to use the machine if I aligned everything up perfectly. It was an expensive one, but well worth the money as I use it so often. I know this latest problem is my fault, but the earlier breakage wasn’t. Sometimes I wonder if it is worth paying a bit more for something if it is still going to break anyway. Once, sick of having to buy toasters all the time, I bought the most expensive model I could find, thinking it would last longer. It didn’t. Stephen had a big say in my purchase of this whizz. He was using his man’s brain in deciding a more solid machine would be better than some of the cheaper ones I was looking at. I was very pleased with it. If I can remove the melted plastic, I might still be able to use this one, but we don’t seem to have anything that can fit inside the bowl to do the necessary repairs. The plastic is too hard for a knife and pliers are the wrong shape.

Damn again.

But on a brighter note, the brownies turned out very well. Perhaps I should make more biscuits this way in the future.