Desserts are better (planned) in multiples

Yesterday I learned an important lesson: always plan multiple desserts when planning a party, especially when trying to prepare new things. 

Brendan and I were hosting a barbeque in honor of his intern at work leaving and going back to school.  This was my first opportunity to really go all out with baking in our new house, however I was feeling rather uninspired when it came to my specialty of cupcakes.  After staring at foodgawker.com for hours on end, I finally settled on some red velvet cream cheese brownies and vanilla toffee popcorn. 

The recipe I found for the brownies had some wonderful instructions, and beautiful pictures to accompany it.  The author described her desire to have the brownies be "fudgier" -- and someone came to the rescue with a fudgy recipe.  So I tried to use the new instructions for the brownie batter, and still use the same cream cheese "topping" that the original poster wrote about.

Well... the inside never baked through, and the top and sides were starting to burn.  Phooey.   They tasted really awesome for not being baked through all the way, but not something you can serve at a party.  Brendan's coworkers probably wouldn't have appreciated me giving them salmonella from the raw eggs.

So, I tossed them and looked toward my secondary dessert.  Toffee popcorn is more a "candy making" dessert than a "baking" achievement, but fortunately for me, they turned out a lot better than the brownies!

If I were to remake this, I would probably cut the recipe in half.  It calls for 8 cups of popcorn (or two bags of microwave popcorn), and I don't have a bowl large enough to hold all of that popcorn and stir in the toffee mixture.  I would also probably use a colander to remove the un-popped kernels.. I think I might loose a tooth if I keep eating this stuff!