Consider a white chocolate mocha brownie as a substitute for your morning coffee. This fudgy treat is like a toasty, chocolaty cup of Joe and it has enough caffeine to keep you going for the entire day.
Like most other brownies, these come together simply, with standard ingredients like butter and eggs, but the mocha powder gives it a jolt. White chocolate chips are stirred into a thick, dark chocolate batter.
There is the equivalent caffeine of just under one shot of espresso in each of these brownies from the Round the Corner Brownie Co., a homegrown business run out of an Amherst kitchen.
“It’s an adult brownie,” says the baker Dawn Lepere, 45, explaining that mocha brownies will leave children bouncing off the walls.
But that’s just one of the nine varieties she makes, including flavors like the peanut butter blondie and the white chocolate toasted pecan, which is dusted with powdered sugar and looks like a mini wedding cake.
Lepere, who started her business last February, says she is always thinking of new combinations. Other popular varieties include raspberry with a seedless jam filling and butterscotch with caramelized potato sticks piled on top, a compatible combination of salty and sweet. A pumpkin spice variety is currently on the drawing board.
“Flavors just come to me from time to time,” she says. “The mocha seemed like an obvious one.”
There are also a few gluten-free varieties, like the flourless chocolate brownie and the caramelized white chocolate blondie. The blondies are more like deep dish cookies.
“I try to have something for everyone,” she says.
But it didn’t come easy. Lepere says she baked batch after batch until she got just the right texture, consistency and flavor for the confections she sells for $3 apiece or $36 per dozen.
The decision to start the Round the Corner Brownie Co. came to Lepere while she was considering a new direction. She had been a stay-at-home mom for years, she says, and had bounced among different part-time jobs. She wanted to find something that would give her the chance to do something she enjoys, while leaving time to spend with her 13-year-old daughter, Jolie Lepere, and her husband, Jeff Starns, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“I’ve always liked to make sweets,” she says, “but this is the most serious I have been about baking.”
She named her business for the shape of her product. Unlike most brownies, these are round, made in a muffin tray to make sure that every bite has just enough gooey middle and just enough of a crisp edge.
The idea is that no one likes missing out on the crust of a homemade brownie, says Lepere.
She invested in new cooking pans, business cards and a tent to use when she sells at outdoor events such as farmers markets. Down the line, she says, she would like to buy a commercial oven.
She hired a graphic designer to help develop her logo, which is a chocolate chip surrounded by a circle of smaller chocolate chips.
She joined the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce to help get the word out, but most of her marketing is done on social media.
“I did make an initial investment,” she says, “but I knew it wouldn’t be too expensive. It’s pretty awesome to be able to start a business on a few thousand dollars.”
By 8:30 a.m. on a recent morning, she is already at work on an order of four dozen brownies for a birthday party. Wearing sweatpants, her hair tied back, she is multitasking in the kitchen of her small ranch home on Laurel Lane. Her kitchen, which has been inspected by the health department, is exceptionally clean and her oven, which is a typical home oven, is remarkably small.
“It’s the oven that came with the house. One day I’ll get a fancy new one,” she says.
Cradling a bowl of brownie batter in one arm, she adds a spoon of sugar to the mixture as the oven beeps. She dons an oven mitt and heads over to retrieve two piping hot trays.
Then, she scoops mocha white chocolate batter into another muffin tin and pops it in the oven for the next round.
Somehow the batter stays neatly contained in the mixing bowl as she works, and the marble counter space stays sparkling clean.
The smell of chocolate permeates the house.
“I think I drive my family crazy with the smell,” she says.
Since her business is still new, there is no typical number of order per week, Lepere says. The demand ebbs and flows; sometimes she has three orders, sometimes none.
This summer she has been setting up regularly at the South Hadley Farmers Market and she has been on the lookout for other events where she can sell her brownies. This Sunday she will be at a craft fair that supports the Relay for Life cancer fundraiser at the Elk’s Lodge in Florence.
“I’m just starting to get my toe wet with the markets and festivals.” Within the next few months, she says, she plans to get her wholesaling license to start selling her wares in local shops and grocery stores.
When the cold weather roll around, she hopes to sell her goods at the Northampton and Amherst indoor farmers markets.
“I’m looking all around to find a home for the winter,” she says.
Because she can bake just two dozen brownies at a time, a busy day means her small oven is going for hours as she moves batches in and out.
By the time her daughter comes home from school and her husband is back from work, brownies have taken over, piled on the counters and the kitchen table.
She says she hopes to open a bakery one day so she can serve her brownies still warm out of the oven.
But for now, she’s happy to be taking her brownies to her customers: “Starting the business is the best thing I ever did.”
Lisa Spear can be reached at lspear@gazettenet.com.