It's all in the ingredients

I've had lots of compliments over the years about my baked goods, with many people attempting my same recipes and getting different results. Not sure what the difference is, but I can tell you one secret: ingredients.

For example:

I made some brownies tonight to bring some in to work tomorrow as it's the Friday before Valentine's Day. The recipe calls for 2/3 C of baking cocoa. So I used 1/3 C of your regular old, run-of-the-mill Hershey's baking cocoa, and 1/3 C of a gourmet dark baking cocoa that a former co-worker of mine gave special from his stash. The stuff is expensive and custom ordered from the internet only, but is worth every cent.

Just look at the difference in color:

He warned me against doing a full substitute to the dark cocoa, because it's so rich it would overpower the entire recipe, thus my solution of half and half.

We'll see if my co-workers agree that my substitution worked. Lucky co-workers...