My mom used to make chocolate pudding if she had milk that was getting old, and brownies if she had eggs that were getting old. I guess chocolate covers a host of sins.
No nuts preferred!
Chocolate chips Ok! Occasionally like to add caramel chips and/or peanut butter chips. M&Ms and Reeses are out.
No frosting.
Inside piece or edge? I don’t care either way.
Box mix or made from scratch? Box mix --I am far to lazy to make from scratch!!!
Anything else? I really like take nice warm piece of brownie and pile ice cream on it covered with chocolate and caramel syrup with whipped cream–a homemade brownie sundae
Bath & Body Works should come out with that.
Nah, it’s just a way of using those up before they turn. Both milk and eggs are items you’ll know immediately if they’re too old.
No nuts, thanks
I don’t need frosting, but cream cheese is a nice twist sometimes.
No thanks again to the chocolate chips, etc.
Box mix is perfect!
Would you be willing to share this? < puppy dog eyes >
Nuts or no nuts? If nuts, what kind? Nut-free, please. But I’ll tolerate them if I’m desperate enough (i.e., if a nutty brownie is put in front of me).
Chocolate chips, M&Ms, Reeses, nothing? Nothing. And really nothing except chocolate chips (for those, see “if desperate enough” above).
Frosted or not? Not!
Inside piece or edge? Inside.
Box mix or made from scratch? Yes, please. 
Anything else? The few times I made brownies – decades ago – I melted mint chocolate chips into the mix. I love mint + chocolate, and the only other “mint brownies” I’ve ever seen just had yucky mint-like frosting.
A kindred spirit! 
Back then the idea of using peppermint extract would have been beyond me, but mint chocolate chips were sometimes challenging to find and this sounds like a great idea – with a note to ensure that the mix is fairly moist.
Of course~the recipe card in her handwriting is framed and in the kitchen. Those brownies went to hundreds of track meets and cross country meets when my jock daughter was in high school.
It may take a few weeks til I can read her tiny handwriting so remind me if it doesn’t show up.
These ladies always have their food truck around during the summer and it smells awesome.
Add me to the “nuts are great, just not in brownies” contingent. Looks like we’re well represented here.
I prefer no pieces of other stuff, but will tolerate.
No frosting.
Either inside or edge, mild preference for inside.
Somebody puts a plate of brownies out, it doesn’t say how they were made, so I have no idea whether box v. scratch makes a difference.
I went to the supermarket today, and they had ample eggs at $5.99/dozen. So I decided to make brownies. They are in the oven now.
And I’m working on digitizing my recipe book for my kids, so y’all get the first draft of the digital version of the recipe:
6 large eggs
3 cups sugar
1 Tbsp vanilla
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
6 oz Baker’s unsweetened chocolate
2 cups AP flour (295g)
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
add-ins of your choice
preheat the oven to 375F and butter your cooking tray. (I use a 12" x 17" jelly roll pan, but you can also use a smaller, deeper dish. The recipe calls for 13" x 9".)
Beat the eggs until fluffy. Slowly add in the sugar, then the vanilla, and leave the mixer on high until everything else is ready (about 10 minutes.)
Measure the flour, baking powder, and salt and sift together to remove any clumps and mix them well.
Melt the chocolate and butter together, using your favorite method. I like to put them in a glass bowl and use the microwave. Start with 30 seconds, then kinda mush the chocolate into the butter, and continue nuking 15 seconds at a time, stirring well after each pulse, until the chocolate is just barely melted. It should finish with the residual heat in the bowl as you stiff. I pulsed 5 or 6 times today, i think. (after the initial 30 seconds.)
Turn the mixer to low, and blend the chocolate into the egg mixture.
After that is fully mixed, add the flour, beating and stirring just barely enough to blend. Stir in any add-ins. (the recipe called for 1.5 cups of walnuts. I used 12 oz of chocolate chips, because my husband likes them in brownies.)
Pour batter into greased 13" x 9" pan (or my 17" x 12" pan) and cook until a toothpick comes out nearly clean. 35-40 minutes for the deep pan, 20-30 for the shallower one.
Allow to cool half an hour, then cut them and remove from the pan onto cooling racks. It’s very hard to cut them either sooner (they crush) or after they cool, so this time is important, if not precise.
These should have a crispy, glossy top, crispy edges, and be somewhat cake-like, not gooey.
We (and by we, I mean my wife who’s the baker!) use Alton Brown’s brownie recipe:
Not too dissimilar, in that it’s a lot of eggs and butter, rich, fudgey, and decadent. But the biggest difference is the use of parchment paper. It’s just sooo much better than just a greased dish. Anything with this much egg and sugar tends to bake on hard.
And they totally agree with @puzzlegal’s timing on cooling.
Nuts or no nuts? If nuts, what kind? No nuts or pecans only (walnuts usually taste bitter to me)
Chocolate chips, M&Ms, Reeses, nothing? None of these.
Frosted or not? Not
Inside piece or edge? Inside
Box mix or made from scratch? I don’t know if I’ve ever had from scratch, so either.
Anything else? Yeah, I like the blondies too, perhaps even more than the traditional type.
mmm
I’ve never had a problem removing the warm brownies. And they have a nice hit of butter on the edged from the buttered baking pan.
I like chopped Walnuts in my Brownies.
I discovered the one bowl, microwave recipe almost a decade ago. It was a tv commercial for bakers chocolate.
This isn’t the microwave in a cup thing.
It uses the microwave to melt the butter and semi sweet chocolate squares. Stir in the sugar, then the eggs & vanilla and finally the flour. Pour in square pand and Bake
Couldn’t be easier. Makes a fudgy brownie.
I’m making a batch right now, as one of the kiddos asked a couple days ago to bake them. This batch has semi-sweet chocolate chips in it. No frosting–they’re plenty sweet as they are. The more fudgy rather than cakey kind. Were I making them for myself, I absolutely would put walnuts in them. I don’t eat a lot of sweet stuff, but there is nothing more heavenly to me than a sweet, chocolately fudgy brownie, offset texturally by the nutty crunch and balanced sweet-wise with a little bit of bitterness from the walnuts.
I have nothing against box mixes, but I don’t think I’ve ever made brownies from a mix. It’s always been cocoa powder (or sometimes Baker’s chocolate), flour, sugar, eggs, oil (or butter), vanilla, for me. No leaveners in mine. I tend to prefer edge pieces (just like with my square cut pizza here in Chicago), but I’m fine with interior, too.
Oh, and I use parchment paper for ease of getting them out of the baking dish/pan.
You are ALL correct.
Except about the peppermint. 
Ya lost me at cake-like. Cake is cake. Brownies, IMO, should be fudgy, boderline gooey. As said before, if you want cake, make cake.
For those that like edges, I am sure you have seen this pan, but just in case you have not.
I never understood frosting brownies.
I agree they are already very sweet.
No frosting for me.
I don’t even like them sprinkled with powdered sugar. It just falls off onto my pants.