moist cherry brownies and bonfires

yesterday we celebrated my cousin's 20th birthday party at Corona Del Mar beach, and since she decided to hire someone to bake cupcakes for her (-___-), i decided i still wanted to bake a little something just to contribute. what was funny was that people were telling me how great the cupcakes were that they thought i baked haha.

anyway, onto the brownies! *drool* they were sooo gooey and chocolatey. also, instead of using dried cherries like the recipe suggested, i bought some fresh cherries and used those instead, because i wanted them to help make the brownies extra moist :) and and and i pitted each individual cherry BY HAND, because THAT is how i like to include the looove that was needed in baking this! :)

soooo good :p it's kinda hard to see the cherries in here cuz they were so dark, but i didn't care because you could TASTE them :D also, apologies for the terrible lighting in these pics, but i finished baking them around 11:30 the night before, so you can imagine how late it was when they actually cooled down so i could cut them and take the pics. if you can't tell, that's supposed to be a fresh cherry in front of the brownies, but you can see how dark those cherries were...

right out of the oven. the only problem i had with this recipe is that it didn't specify how big of a pan was needed, and it said that it only makes 12-15 brownies. all i have to say to that is GOOD LORD how big do you cut your brownies, woman? i would say i got AT LEAST 24 fairly-sized portions out of there (and when i say "fairly-sized," i mean HUGE).


the bonfire! my god we had to work hard to get to this point. and i'm not just talking about making the actual fire, but some people actually came there at 4 pm saying it was their bonfire pit, and the arguing and raising of voices ensued. i swear, this happens every time i go to the beach! apparently people are really defensive about their fires...