Flourless Chocolate Brownies

I regret to say that these were somewhat of a disaster.  They were simple to make and taste incredible, but never, for lack of a better word, coalesced into brownies.  Instead they remained a somewhat fudgy but unfortunately crumbly mixture.  I don't mind the fudgy-ness, but the crumbly-ness is problematic because it is preventing me from cutting the brownies into proper bars.

I have a feeling that the problem is not the recipe, and not even how I executed it, but actually is my oven.  You see, it has decided not to work properly.  I preheated it to the relatively low temperature the recipe called for and thought everything was fine.  When I checked the brownies five minutes before the time they should have been done they were completely raw.  So I turned up the oven a bit.  That's when I noticed the problem.  It continued to say it was preheated.  Well, just to see what was going on, I turned it all the way to 450* and it still said it was preheated.  If it actually was preheated to that temperature, the brownies would have been burnt not raw.  Consequently, I have to assume something is wrong with the oven's thermometer.  And since the brownies took almost double the cooking time to firm up on top, I'm assuming that the oven is also running quite cool (something I've been suspecting for a while).  I think this caused the brownies to come out odd and rather un-brownie like.  Once my oven is fixed I'll have to try these again, I'd imagine they will be quite good (especially since they taste good now)!

Luckily the edges firmed up enough to salvage a few brownies.  Normally, this wouldn't be such a priority.  You see, I have no objection to eating this not-so-much-a-brownie out of the pan with a fork (or, since I want to feed it to my mom and pops as well, scooped out of the pan onto a plate before being devoured).  However, I made these because I was hoping to bring them to my class tomorrow and my teacher cannot eat gluten so I wanted these to work.  I couldn't save enough to feed the class, but I did get enough proper bars out of it to give to my professor.

As for the class, I sacrificed the freshly baked Mexican Chocolate Brownies I made for myself (I'll post them tomorrow).  They are currently sitting in a tin ready to be transported and eaten.  It is quite sad, really.  I'd planned on freezing them for myself so I'd have brownies in the house again (I'm out of my favorite chocolate brownies).  But I suppose it will all be worth it when I see how happy they make classmates (hopefully).  Plus, I can always make another batch.  Actually, this may be good, I'm thinking of trying to create an Orange Chocolate Brownie, this will give me the perfect excuse to get right on that!