Oat-Bottom Brownies

Modified from For the Love of Food, who got it from Julie Andersen

Oat Bottom:

2 cups rolled oats

3/4 cup flour

1/2 cup Light brown sugar

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2/3 cup butter, melted

Brownies:

14 oz. bittersweet chocolate [I used a bag of bittersweet chips plus enough shares to finish it out - I think I needed 2 more oz - chips mean no cutting, which I like and they were cheaper]

2 oz. unsweetened chocolate [this seems like a lot of types, but that adds to the taste and honestly I had it all but bittersweet]

4 oz. semi-sweet chocolate

1 cup butter

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

4 eggs [they specified large, but I always use extra large when baking so I just used that]

1 tbsp vanilla

1 cup flour

1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9 by 13 baking dish. In a large bowl, mix oats, flour, brown sugar, baking powder & salt. Add butter and stir until thoroughly combined. Press mixture evenly into bottom of dish. Bake 12 minutes & cool.

Okay, they used a food processor to deal with the chocolate and the mixing - that seemed like a pain to me as I hate cleaning the food processor. So what I did was start the butter meleting and then chop the chocolate with a knife and add it and 1/2 cup of sugar and melted it in the microwave. That worked for him. Then I put this all in the stand mixer (after finishing, I think you could do this by hand pretty easily) and added cocoa powder, rest of the sugars and combined. Then I added eggs and vanilla and mixed. Then you add in flour adn salt and mix.

***They added nuts (which they toasted) at this point. I hate nuts, hence I didn't put any in.

Pour batter over baked bottom, spread evenly. Bake about 40-45 minutes until tester in center comes out slightly moist. Cool completely in pan before cutting into squares!