Three Items or Less: Upper Crust Brownies

An introductory note about this ongoing grocery-store exploration feature: Yes, it's more properly "three items or fewer." "Or less" is a tongue-in-cheek concession to the way the real world actually functions.

Now, the food.

You can get an excellent rundown of what Upper Crust is all about right here, but in a nutshell, it's a local company that markets relatively healthy, ready-to-use dough that bakes up into morsels including cookies, breads, brownies and blondies.

The brownies caught my eye over at Kowalski's largely on the strength of their hauntingly beautiful rosemaling-style packaging:

When baked, the dough creates a relatively rich, respectably homemade tasting batch of brownies. Better than Betty Crocker? You bet. But the truly remarkable thing about these things is that they arrive as big honkin' square of brownie dough.

Here's the secret: Pop open the box and eat the dough. It's essentially a cold, cocoa-rich, extremely dense fudge.

As brownies, these things rate a 7 or 8 out of ten. As fudge? 9 out of 10.