Hola, fam and welcome to 2021! It feels good to look forward to a New Year, doesn’t it?
This is the time to make your resolutions, and therefore it’s also notoriously the slowest time of the year for our bakeries. Why? Because everyone’s damn resolutions are actually to not eat sweets. It works for a couple weeks, and then they slowly start to come back come Valentine’s Day. Every. Single. Year.
My feeling about setting resolutions is that you shouldn’t set yourself up for failure. And restricting yourself from eating sweets is definitely setting you up for big time failure. Of course you’re going to cave, so there’s no need to then also feel shitty about yourself as a result. Eating sweets should make you happy! And I firmly believe in the power of eating in moderation. It’s just less exhausting to go ahead and eat some sweets from time to time rather than constantly thinking about how you can avoid eating them. We should be setting resolutions that focus on how we want to feel. Do you want to feel happy? Then eat the damn sweet from time to time!
So today, we’re going to make some *decadent* brownies to really start this year of indulgence with a bang. They’re rich and fudgey and I add a little dulce de leche swirl to give them a little je ne sais quoi. *chef’s kiss.*
Enticing right? Well not to everyone….
One time, years ago at Baked&Wired, I was managing the shop when a young woman approached me holding a half-eaten brownie.
“Um..excuse me?, she said
“Yes, hi, how can I help you?” I said back earnestly.
“Yeah, um, I don’t like this brownie. Can I have something else?”
“I’m so sorry! Is something wrong with it?” I replied, concerned that maybe it had slipped by the sell-by date and tasted old, or worse…there was a hair baked in.
“It’s too fudgey” she said, thrusting the brownie in my face.
You can imagine my confusion. The brownie was too….fudgey?….And that was a….bad thing?
The narrative “the customer is always right” has been around for a long ass time. Actually, it was popularized in the these rich white retailers Harry Gordon Selfridge, John Wanamaker and Marshall Field in the early 1900s. At the time, this idea was revolutionary because the default was putting all of the responsibility on the customer for checking the quality of a product before they buy it. And when they adopted “the customer is always right” mentality, it worked - people flocked to their department stores.
I fully believe that a nurturing customer service experience is crucial for any business. By treating your customers with kindness, consideration, and respect, you simply humanize the transaction. It makes the customer feel like their purchase really matters, and it turn, that they really matter. And because they feel so positively about their purchase, they want to repeat that feeling again - so they come back again and again, and also recommend you to their friends and family (and in the digital age, even to strangers on services like Yelp and Google Review).
And it makes the retailer feel good! We get the ooey gooey feels from being the facilitators of your happiness. We leave our work feeling like we’ve made the world a better place.
But - is the customer always right? No. They definitely are not.
This phrase has been taken too literally. And when it’s taken too literally, the customer will take advantage of the power dynamic in the exchange (considering they are the one with the money, and the retailer is the one who needs the money). As much as I truly love people and am generally optimistic of human nature, I also know full well that people can be dishonest, have unrealistic expectations, and be selfish. And by constantly feeding into the narrative that the “customer is always right,” you’re actually constantly screwing over the business, leaving them with less funds to actually invest in making the general public happier, or worse, even keep their business open. And in these scenarios, I’m referring to small businesses, who are giving it all they have to make it through another day. But, hey, go ahead and take advantage of the big box realtors who already own our data anyway (I see you Amazon!)
So back to this brownie experience.
According to her, this brownie was “too fudgey.” I suppose it was too fudgey for her taste - but that doesn’t make her right. That’s simply her preference. Now, if something was actually wrong with the brownie, then that is fully on me to rectify the situation. And I would apologize and replace the item with bells and whistles. But, if she does not like the brownie, then she should simply not purchase it next time. The retailer should not suffer financially because of her entitlement.
Plus, I really must say, fudgey brownies are kinda the point, no? Who doesn’t want a fudgey brownie?
So what did I do?
I very kindly and politely told her that is how we have been making our brownies for years and if she doesn’t like it then we recommend she does not purchase it next time and instead try the dozens of other products we offer. And while she was definitely a little pissed off, that felt really good for me to say. And guess what, I saw her back at the shop the next week.
So, here is a fudgey brownie recipe which I chose to make extra decadent by adding a dulce de leche swirl (if you tuned into my birthday cake recipe, you know I have a vat of extra dulce de leche in my freezer right now).
Dulce de Leche Brownies
Ingredients
1 ½ cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vanilla
2/3 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
4 eggs
½ cup dulce de leche : 1 can sweetened condensed milk, 1/3 teaspoon kosher salt, 1/3 teaspoon vanilla
Let’s do it!
For the dulce de leche:
Peel the label off your sweet and condensed milk and place in a large aluminum pan and cover with at least 2 inches of water. That’s right, don’t open it! Keep it completely in the can. Bring to boil and then turn heat to a consistent simmer.
Add water as needed as it starts to boil off.
Once it is boiling, cook for 4 hours (the longer you cook the thicker consistency you get.).
Let the cans cool completely.
Add the milk to a bowl and add salt and vanilla. Stir until incorporated.
For the brownies:
Preheat oven to 325 F.
In a small bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt.
In a large bowl, mix the chocolate chips and vanilla.
In a medium sauce pan, melt the butter, sugar and water. Bring to a simmer.
Pour the hot butter mixture over chocolate chip mixture. Give it a few stirs to distribute butter. Let it sit for a minute so chips can melt.
Stir a few times to incorporate.
Add eggs one at a time, stirring well after each.
Fold in the flour mixture until just incorporated.
Pour in a 9 x 13 pan lined with foil and sprayed non-stick spray or smeared with butter.
Swirl the dulce de leche around the top with your fingers.
Bake at 325 for 25 mins. Rotate the pan halfway through to ensure even baking.
You don’t want to overbake, or else they will turn cakey. You’ll know it’s time when the edges are visibly baked through and a crack starts to form and the center is set (not jiggly if you shake the pan a bit).
Sprinkle a little Maldon salt on top after you remove from the oven if you’re feeling sassy, I certainly was!
Cut that ish up and enjoy!
my sobremesa song this week is baby forgive me - robyn floorplan remix
Oh, and please don’t be an asshole to your customer service reps.
Happy Baking, love ya mucho.
Tessa