The mother of invention

I lost count.  I was really excited last month when I realized that I had a blogging milestone coming up.  I knew it would be sometime in February.  But I apparently wasn't paying attention.  So instead of happily announcing that I am at post #400, I can now tell you that I'm at post #402.  Oh, well. =)

Even though I already posted some this month, I figured such a momentous event called for celebrating with brownies.  Who am I kidding?  I don't need an excuse to make brownies.  But it is a good opportunity to make some new brownies.  Ones that I won't have that much competition for, since I have a feeling my kids won't eat them.  The one category I had left for this month was magazine focus.    It's not usually the first place I look, but I thought I'd try Bon Appetit.  I like a lot of what I read in the magazine, but don't search their website all that often.  The recipe that quickly caught my eye was the Cocoa Brownies with Browned Butter and Walnuts.  It's from Alice Medrich, and I've made enough of her recipes to be pretty confident that I'd like the brownies.

I only made a couple of small changes to the recipe--I used pecans instead of walnuts, and I added salt--half a teaspoon.  I also took a shortcut and simply lined my pan with non-stick foil.  I may try another cocoa powder in the future, but for this round I went with plain old Hershey's.  The batter was easy to mix up, and I love the fact that you can make it in one pot.  The suggested baking time of 25 minutes worked great for me.

The only downside is that I was making the brownies last night after dinner.  So I knew it was going to be challenging to get decent pictures.  Sometimes I can manage to take pictures in the morning before work, but I had a very long day today.  I left the house before the sun was up, and knew that I wouldn't be home again until long after it set.  Then inspiration hit--I took a page from my friend Abby's book (she likes to take dough on field trips), and took the brownies to work with me.  Now you're probably thinking, she takes baked goods to work all the time.  That's true, but not with the intent of taking pictures of them in natural light.  Which meant, in my car:

The verdict?  The pictures turned out better than I expected. =)  I need to work on the setup if I do this again, but at least the color in the pictures is good.  The brownies were really good, too.  Jamie and I both like them a lot.  I'm not usually in a nuts-in-my-chocolate mood, but I love pecans, and they worked really well in these brownies.  I think the salt was a good addition, too.  I did share the brownies with one of my coworkers, who thought they were fantastic.

If you'd like to try the recipe for yourself, you can find it here at Bon Appetit!  So what's the most unusual thing you've done to get good blog pictures? =)

Wordless Wednesday - Shiny

(ordered from my awesome friend Anandi - check out more of her stuff!)

Grin and slurp it

I think we've hit a new milestone.  I got to sleep until 7:45am on a Sunday morning.  When I got up, both girls had been up for a little while, but it seems they didn't feel the need to get me out of bed as well.  Gillian has done this a few times lately, so I think she may have finally given up on insisting that I be awake anytime she is. =)  Oh, and we did have one other milestone this weekend:

really not sure how it's possible for her to be old enough to be losing teeth

Once I'm up, though, the questions begin.  "Is breakfast ready yet?"  "What are we having for breakfast?"  "Why haven't you started making our breakfast yet?!"  I like to bake muffins or scones on the weekend so we'll have stuff to eat for a few days during the week, but B & G aren't very patient about waiting while I do that.  Today, though, we tried something new.  Brianna asked me the other night if I knew how to make fruit smoothies.  I've been trying to find ways to get a greater variety of fruits into our diet, and this was a perfect opportunity.  When we went grocery shopping, I picked up some frozen raspberries and mango chunks as well as some fresh raspberries.  (I already had frozen peaches in the freezer, though I should probably make sure they haven't turned into a solid block of ice, since I'm not sure how long they've been in there.)  

So to hold off the ravenous horde while I did some baking, I pulled out my blender.  I can tell it's been a while since I've done that, since G commented that "I didn't know we had one of those!" =)  I started with a cup of plain yogurt.  (I usually keep Brown Cow full-fat yogurt on hand to eat with my granola.)  I added a bit of honey, since I know the girls aren't big fans of the plain yogurt as it is.  I tossed in some chunks of frozen mango and some of the fresh raspberries and about a quarter cup of milk to keep things from being too thick.  I blended it all until it was fairly smooth.

The verdict?  Definitely a hit!  Both girls finished their smoothies pretty quickly.  It doesn't hurt that they love drinking through straws.  I tasted a bit of what was left in the blender and thought it was pretty tasty.  We'll have to try some different fruit combinations to see what else they like.  And I've got a way to shut down the constant nagging. =)

Raspberry Mango Smoothies

225 grams (8 ounces) plain yogurt

22 grams (1 tablespoon) honey

85 grams (3 ounces) frozen mango chunks

60 grams (2 ounces) raspberries (fresh or frozen)

60 grams (2 ounces) milk (we used 1%)

Add all of the ingredients to a blender.  (I find it easiest to put my blender container on my scale and add everything to it, taring between ingredients.)  Blend until the mixture is smooth, which may take a minute or two if you use all frozen fruit.  Divide the mixture between two glasses and serve with straws. =)

Wordless Wednesday - 41

Vanilla Cupcake with Chocolate Frosting (both from Bon Appetit Desserts)
that I made for my birthday yesterday;

frosted with a 2D tip as in this video (via Tracey)

Tarts and Pi

I was excited to see the second pick this month for the TWD-Baking with Julia group.  Our group of hosts (Steph, Spike, Jessica & Jaime) chose Chocolate Truffle Tartlets for us to make this week.  I love chocolate, and I love tarts.  I like pie too, but there's something great about a tart--I really like crust, and the ratio of filling to crust in a tart is just right for me.  In addition to dessert tarts, I like to make savory ones as well.  

In the course of my TWD journey, I've acquired a lot of bakeware.  It's a testament to my love of tarts that even 4+ years ago, before I started TWD, I owned tart pans in several sizes.  I know I had a 9 1/2" one and an 11" one, as well as a set of half a dozen 4 1/2" tartlet pans.  I might have even had the 10 1/4" one already.  In an attempt to make smaller tarts--so I could make them more often with less guilt (since most tart crusts have lots of butter), sometime in the past year I picked up 6" and 8" ones.  Oh, and I also have a 14" x 4 1/2" rectangular pan that I love.  

I knew I wanted to make half the recipe, which would be three tartlets.  I didn't want to figure out a good way to divide that between four people, so I decided to make a larger tart.  So I had to determine what size to use.  That led me to one of my favorite baking activities, doing the math. =)  Yes, I know most of you are shaking your heads, wondering if I'm crazy.  But I really do enjoy it.  

My tart pans are all about the same in depth, so I really only had to do a calculation of the surface area.  The recipe says it makes six 4 1/2" tartlets.  So for one, it's 2.25 x 2.25 x π, or about 16 square inches.  For six, that's a total of about 96 square inches.  I planned to halve the recipe, so I needed a pan with about 48 square inches in area.  My 8" tart pan has an area of 4 x 4 x π, which is about 50 square inches.  Close enough!

Even though I was making half the recipe, I went ahead and made the full amount of tart dough.  I didn't want to mess with half an egg yolk, and I figured I could just freeze the extra dough.  As I've mentioned before, I prefer natural cocoa powder, so that's what I used.  In this case it was Hershey's since I didn't think the flavor of the crust would stand out due to the filling (so no point in breaking out the really good stuff).  As instructed, I left the bottom out of the tart pan (never done that before!).  The 8" pan fit nicely on one of my quarter sheet pans that I lined with parchment.  

I got a nice upper body workout making the filling.  I know that my stand mixer doesn't do a good job whipping small volumes, and I hate dragging out my hand mixer (it's a bit buried in one of my cabinets).  So I grabbed my balloon whisk and a big bowl and beat the egg yolks, vanilla and sugar by hand.  It really wasn't bad, since I was using the right tools for the job.  I added a big pinch of salt to the sugar when I was adding it; I find that it adds a lot to chocolate desserts.  For the filling, I used 60% chocolate (Agostoni discs that I buy at Central Market).  I skipped the cookies in the filling, not being in the mood for crunch.  Instead, I increased the amount of chocolate chunks (to about 100 grams total for my half recipe).  I don't care for white chocolate, so I used a mix of milk chocolate and dark chocolate for the chunks.  (I got into my supply of Trader Joe's chocolate that I brought back from our trip to Ohio early last summer. )  To make the chocolate easier to cut into chunks without it breaking into lots of little shards, I microwaved the bigger pieces of chocolate on 10% power for about 30 seconds first.  

I wasn't sure about the baking time for my 8" tart versus the tartlets.  I ended up baking the empty crust for 14 minutes.  (I froze it beforehand to make sure it would hold its shape while baking.)  My filling took 15 minutes to be dry on top and apparently set in the middle.  The tart had a chance to cool for over an hour before we cut into it, so it was pretty close to room temperature.  

The verdict?  I must have guessed well on the bake time, because the texture of the tart was perfect.  I have no doubt that we'll be making this recipe again--it was really delicious.  Brianna was a bit disappointed that the texture wasn't the same after the tart had been in the fridge overnight--she liked the slightly oozing texture it had at room temperature.  The tart was very rich; I'm not sure how anyone would be up for eating a whole 4 1/2" tartlet.  We got 8 servings out of my 8" tart, and I think I'll stick with that size in the future. 

If you'd like to give this recipe a try, you can find the recipe in the book, of course.  You can also find it by visiting this week's hosts.  To see what everyone else thought of the Truffle Tart(lets), check out this week's Links!  

p.s. I'll be back tomorrow with some cupcakes, since today is my birthday! =)

One-sentence Wednesday - From the heart

For our Valentine's Day breakfast, I tweaked a scone recipe from King Arthur Flour--substituting cocoa powder for some of the flour (I used 42 grams of cocoa & 285 grams of flour) and adding a cup (170 grams) of chocolate chips--cut my scones into hearts, baked them for 18 minutes (skipping the freezing step), and added a simple glaze (milk & powdered sugar); the girls were impressed that I made them heart-shaped. =)

Heart of darkness

I didn't have Valentine's Day in mind when I made these brownies.  I just really wanted some chocolate.  The heart shape came about because brown squares aren't terribly photogenic. =)  I feel a little like a copycat, posting these Sweet and Salty Brownies relatively soon after my friend Tracey did. I admit, she was the immediate inspiration, but I've actually made them about 4 times in the past year.   Unfortunately, until this most recent batch, I didn't manage to take any pictures of them so I could actually post about them.  We were too busy eating them. =)  The brownies come from a cookbook that I picked up after Christmas last year--Baked Explorations.  This was actually was the first recipe that I made from the book.  (And I really need to delve into it more than I have so far.)  The recipe makes a 13"x9" pan, and since the brownies are really rich, I always cut them small, so there are plenty to share.  

To make the brownies, the first thing you do is make a salted caramel sauce.  I've mentioned before that I became a much bigger caramel fan after I discovered what a difference it makes to add salt to it.  With a full teaspoon of fleur de sel as well as some sour cream, this particular caramel sauce has a complexity to it that I really enjoy.  The next step is to make brownie batter.  I like mine bittersweet, so I used some 70% El Rey for the chocolate.  The recipe also calls for dark cocoa powder, like Valrhona.  I prefer natural cocoa; since there isn't any leavening that would be affected, I went with my preference and used Scharffen Berger cocoa powder.  Once the brownie batter is made, you spread half of it in your prepared pan--I line my Pyrex pan with non-stick foil rather than parchment.  Next you drizzle some of the caramel over the batter, and spread it to form a thin layer.  Finally, you top it with the remaining brownie batter, then stick the pan in a 350º oven.  (My brownies took 30 minutes to bake.)  Once they come out of the oven, you sprinkle the top with a mix of fleur de sel and coarse sugar; I used turbinado sugar for mine.  

The verdict?  Well, as I mentioned above, these brownies are very rich, and very delicious.  I love salt with chocolate as well as with caramel.  I also prefer fudgy brownies (as opposed to cakey ones), and these are definitely in my favorite category.  Everyone here loved them, as did my coworkers.  They've also been a hit at the daycare when I've taken them there in the past.  

If you'd like to try these for yourself, you can find the recipe in Baked Explorations.  You can also find it all over the web, but I encourage you to check out the cookbook (maybe your local library has it!) since there are lots of other great recipes in it.  Hopefully I can manage to make and blog about some more of them soon. =)