We had Aaron’s sister, brother and brother-in-law over for dinner tonight. With no time to grocery shop this week, Aaron working today and my lack of desire to take 3 kids shopping on a Saturday, I resigned myself to ordering pizza. And baking something that we had the ingredients for.

That left the important question.

But, as I pulled out ingredients, I realized that I did not have what I needed for brownies. No cocoa for my favorite brownie recipe. However, we did have unsweetened chocolate. I found this recipe, and decided to give it a try.

First, you have to melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler.

Melted buttery and chocolate goodness.

Meanwhile, I recommend setting your refrigerated ingredients out. Let them warm up to room temperature. Always a good idea when baking. One of your eggs might even roll off the counter and then you can blog about it. Imperfect Saturdays. It’s a thing.

Add some sugar, but don’t make the mistake I made. Stop daydreaming and pay attention to how many cups you are adding. In the end, I figured it out, but boy was I worried for a few minutes there.

Once you’ve added all of the ingredients for the brownies, put them into pans. I decided that I can’t let anyone down and took a bit of the batter and turned it into mint brownies. You can do this with mint chips, mint Oreos and/or mint extract. Whatever minty stuff you’ve got. Except gum. Or toothpaste. Skip those.

You should definitely do all of this while listening to one of the Doctor Who soundtrack albums. Since today’s the 50th anniversary of the first episode today, that is essential.

Letting your kids watch a movie while you bake might buy you some peace.

While you wait, wait, wait, you can sit on the floor with your dog.

After you are done with the brownies, you still need to make the best part– caramel. At this point, I realized I had no cream. So, I followed this easy recipe for caramel with milk and butter. Yum.

After pouring the caramel on your brownies, you still have the difficult question left.

Mint or caramel?