A 26-Page Brownie Recipe? Only At The Pentagon
Jeremy Whitsitt, with the Department of Defense Combat Feeding Directorate, tells host Guy Raz that the extra care is needed because military bakers face unique challenges.
“One thing we like to say is, ‘What would happen if you cooked a meal, stored it in a stifling hot warehouse, dropped it out of an airplane, dragged it through the mud, left it out with bugs and vermin, and ate it three years later?’” If it were a military meal, Whitsitt says, it would still be edible and maybe even tasty.
Brownies made from the Pentagon’s recipe will probably last about three years if they’re packaged properly. But the important question is, how do they taste? We asked Penny Karas, the founder of Hello Cupcake bakery in Washington, D.C., to whip up us a batch. And to be honest, they weren’t too good: dry, crumbly and dense. But they did taste as if they might last quite a while if boxed up and shipped to a war zone.
The Pentagon actually updated its official brownie specifications recently. The new document has been streamlined and expanded to cover things like lemon poppy seed cake and chocolate banana nut muffin tops. The length? 31 pages.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127058298
Only the government! Maybe I’ll look around for the recipe, see how it compares with what I am doing for the spices. But the reason I chose spices is that whole spices will last decades, about as long as the beans and wheat berries people store. Stuff in a brownie mix? Not so much.