Brownies for Mom

My wife is one of the lucky moms who receive Happy Mother's Day greetings twice a year -- one on the second Sunday of May, the Mother's Day in the Philippines and another in many other countries, and on August 12, Thailand's Mother's Day which is also Queen Sirikit's birthday.


For the first Mother's Day celebration of the year, my son and I gave her a cherry and walnut brownies adorned
with a greeting card my son made under my supervision.


My wife loves this kind of brownies.  In October 2011, a few days before I joined them here in Thailand, I asked her what she wanted me to bring to her from the Philippines.  Cherry walnut fudge brownies was on top of the list.  Unfortunately, only one bakeshop in Manila (Becky's Kitchen) makes it, and I don't know where their shop is.  My wife used to travel for more than an hour all the way from Paranaque, where she lives, to Manila, where the shop is located to buy her favorite brownies.  To make this brownies, I added cherry extract, chopped cherries, and walnut to an instant brownies mix.  I've been using the brownies mix for quite some time now so through trial and error I learned to adjust the amount of cooca powder, chocolate, and fat contents to make the brownies fudgy and moist.  The taste and texture of the finished product, we thought, were close to the original.  But we haven't had Becky's Kitchen brownies in more than five years so maybe we were just be imagining things.  My wife and I enjoyed eating the brownies, and my son, who doesn't like cherries had a few bites -- two, to be exact.

I downloaded a Mother's Day greeting card coloring page from Kaboose.  I printed it on a thick paper so I just have to tape it on a bamboo skewer and stick on the brownie.  The card will be part of my son's activities for the day.  The brownie was in the last stage of baking in the oven when I asked my son to color in the card.  I had to give him the crayons that I wanted him to use.  Normally I would just give him instructions, such as color the bear pink.  I had to stay with him the whole time to remind him that he has an activity to finish and to make sure that he uses the correct crayon as per instruction.  He requires a lot of prompting in performing coloring activities so completing the task before the brownies gets over baked is truly a wonderful Mother's Day gift!