The Long-Awaited Brownies

So this is one of those recipes that I make all the time but for some reason never got around to blogging about. I made them last week for Baked Goods Friday, but I forgot to take a picture – the picture is from first semester of my senior year of college. That’s how long I’ve been meaning to blog about these brownies. 

What do I love about these brownies? Um, how about EVERYTHING. First of all, they are made with almost an entire box of butter. You simply can’t go wrong there. Second of all, you get to brown butter. I’ve been able to brown butter successfully for a few years now, but it still feels like a major accomplishment every time. Third of all, there’s the combination of chocolate, caramel-y flavor (the browned butter), and salt, courtesy of the brittle on top. Oh yes, fourth of all, the brittle. It is so good that you may want to make extra to just sit around in your freezer and eat it as a snack. Fifth of all, you can make the brownies in advance and then frost them at your leisure - the perfect way to jazz up an otherwise plain and homely brownie. Sixth of all, if you don’t feel like making brownies (in which case, what is wrong with you, you fool), you can also use the frosting and brittle on a chocolate cake to delightful effect. 

Okay, hopefully that is enough to convince you of the greatness of these brownies. The brownie recipe is here (although feel free to substitute your own favorite brownie recipe); the frosting and brittle recipe is here. 

Spring Comes Early

Maybe it’s to make up for the utter lack of spring we had in the northeast last year, but it has been an incredibly mild winter. And I’m surely not complaining! Two days ago on my walk home from work, it was so warm that I got frozen yogurt! At night! In February!

In the spirit of this joyous and unexpected warmth in the depths of winter, I set out to make these beautiful Spring Cupcakes from Martha Stewart. I had seen them in my cupcake cookbook long ago and fallen in love with their exquisite elegance. I decided that I was going to put them aside and make them when my friend Rocio got engaged, because a) they are so pretty, perfect for an engagement, b) purple is Rocio’s favorite color and c) they’re kind of complicated so they called for a special occasion. But she is taking an awfully long time to get engaged. It’s so annoying when other people don’t plan their major life decisions around my cupcake-baking schedule.

I was beginning to despair that these cupcakes would ever get made when I got a message from my friend Sarah – she was having a Downton Abbey-themed birthday party, and all were welcome to bring baked goods! I could totally picture the Crawley sisters nibbling on these cupcakes and – added bonus! – purple is Sarah’s favorite color too! So I set to work, feeling rather like Mrs. Patmore and wishing I had a scullery maid to yell at. The brownie base was straightforward enough, and sooo tasty, although the tops were not quite as flat as I had hoped. I found the lavender for the icing at Fairway. Maybe I didn’t steep it for long enough, or maybe I don’t know what lavender is supposed to taste like, but I thought the frosting mostly tasted like milk and confectioner’s sugar. I was also having trouble getting it to not run off the sides and create unsightly rivulets (Mr. Carson would not approve). What I ultimately ended up doing was pouring on spoonfuls of icing from the Pyrex cup and then holding the cupcake over it, rotating so that any extra icing ran off back into the cup. You can do this a few times over if you want a nice thick layer of icing.

The edible flowers are what makes this recipe complicated, so I took the easy way out and just bought some sugar flowers instead of candying pansies or whatever the hell Martha wants you to do. Guess I’ll save that task for when Rocio gets engaged. You can find the recipe here.

MSC Club: Mint (and Caramel) Filled Brownie Cupcakes

Martha Stewart Cupcake Club is back...on this blog anyway.  I have been absent for the last couple of months, but when Rachel of Simple Girl posted a chance for people to pick new flavors, I jumped on it.  I really enjoy being part of baking groups and I wanted to get back connected to this one, so I got to make a pick.  

I chose Mint Filled Brownie Cupcakes from page 122-123 of Martha Stewart's Cupcakes.  I really like a cupcake where there is a little surprise in the middle and I have had my eye on these for a while.  While I was in the store buying peppermint patties, I saw rolos and thought that they would also go well in the cupcakes.  My little one and I had a great time making these together.  These are a great pre-school baking project.  We mixed the batter and he had a great time pressing the candy into the cupcake tins.  We made half with peppermint patties and half with rolos and I enjoyed both.  

The mint ones infused the brownies withe a nice mint flavor throughout and the caramel ones had nice caramel chunks studded throughout (I used two rolos, but I think I would use three in the future).  The brownies had a nice texture, between fudgy and caky and were definitely chocolatey.  

I hope everyone enjoyed baking along with me.  I look forward to seeing how everyone else's turned out.  I am looking forward to next month's raspberry swirl cheesecake.

Salty Brownies for Sweet Katy

Two weeks ago today was my first day of work. I love it so far but, as with any new job, there is a lot to learn! Luckily, I am helped along mightily by Katy, another assistant in the office. She has been training me, and has been so surpassingly kind and helpful and patient in answering even my dumbest questions. (Sample: Sarah: I can't find the Zingales contract, where is it? Katy: Have you checked the contracts folder? Sarah: Oh, thanks.) I wanted to give her a token of my gratitude, and the way I give tokens of gratitude is by baking. Luckily, I had wanted to make the sweet and salty brownies from Baked for a while, ever since finally caving and buying a box of fleur de sel, and this gave me a fine excuse.

As with all Baked creations, this was very buttery, very yummy and very complicated. I was a little disappointed with the caramel flavor, or lack thereof. Maybe I was too cautious because I didn't want it to touch the sides of the pan and so I didn't use enough of it, but I barely tasted it in the finished product. This was probably because of the overwhelming chocolateyness, although next time I will take the suggestion to drizzle the leftover caramel on top. When you eat these brownies, make sure you have a glass of water or milk on hand, because they are EXTREMELY rich. I baked them for 40 minutes instead of 30 and they were still slightly undercooked, but that's how I like 'em. The fleur de sel was definitely worth the purchase, and it really added a special something to the brownies. Between these brownies and showing every how to make PDFs using OpenOffice, I was totally the office hero on Friday.

You can find the recipe here.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Grasshopper Bars

Just noticed something...this is our 200th post!  Wow.  Now, back to regularly scheduled programming.


Another Sunday, another Baked recipe that uses every bowl and utensil in the kitchen.  These were among the recipes that I was most excited to make because I love the combination of chocolate and mint.  However, I had a couple of significant issues with this recipe.  First, Kosher Creme de Menthe does not seem to exist.  Anyone out there know anything about that.  I figured I would just leave it out.  The filling tasted fine, but it did not whip up light and fluffy (as you can see in the pictures).  I don't know if the flour/sugar mixture was too hot when I added the butter, although it felt cool to the touch or what, but no matter how long I whipped it, it would not whip up and I didn't have the patience to try again this morning.  Then, when I put the glaze on, it seemed to melt the mint filling, so it got swirled into some of the glaze instead of creating a nice shiny top.


Despite all that, I really enjoyed the flavor of these.  I hope to try them again and try to get the mint filling right because I think it would have provided a nice balance of texture.  As they were, I thought they were a bit to heavy and fudgey, but overall yummy.


You can find the recipe and what other people baked at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Adventures with the Ice Cream Maker: Keeping It in the Family

Note: Today's double-header is brought to you by Sarah and the Baking Sisters' dad, Irv.

If you're like me, then you believe that there are certain things that define summer. Beautiful sunset walks along the Hudson in Riverside Park...

Sunflowers...

And these small, ripe, intensely flavorful strawberries that start to pop up in farmers' markets around June.

For me, this summer has also brought some exciting news - I finally got a job! I started last week and I love it so far. Conveniently, the night before I started my job happened to be Erev Rosh Chodesh Av. For those of you scratching your heads, that means "the evening of the first day of the month of Av" (Av being the fifth month on the Jewish calendar, and Jewish days starting at sunset.) Despite my happy employment news, Av is considered the saddest month on the Jewish calendar because both of the ancient Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed on the Ninth of Av, plus a lot of other sodding things supposedly happened on that date that I won't get into here. One of the ways that we show our sadness is by not eating meat or doing various other happy things for the nine days leading up to the Ninth of Av. So between our impending meat deprivation and my entry into the world of wage labor, the situation obviously called for some meat. And when the situation obviously calls for some meat, there is an equally obvious call for parve dessert.

My contribution came in the form of brownie bites from Kosher by Design: Short on Time. They are a snap to put together, they are moist and fudgy and last for ages, and when I gave one to my friend she didn't even realize they were parve! You obviously don't have to cut them just the way the recipe says but I agree with Susie Fishbein that it's waaaay fun to eat the edges around the brownie circles. I didn't do all that business with flipping the brownies out of the pan; I found that if you just use a biscuit cutter, they come out pretty easily. I also didn't roll them into balls because in my experience that's always made a huge crumbly mess, but if you want to try it best of luck to you.

Brownie Bites

From Kosher by Design: Short on Time (page 240)

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted margarine, melted and placed in refrigerator to cool for 10 minutes

3/4 cup good-quality Dutch process cocoa powder

1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil

2 cups sugar

1 cup all-purpose flour

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Coating: confectioner's sugar, cocoa powder, chopped nuts, edible glitter, colored sanding sugars

Preheat the oven to 325 F. Line a 7- by 11-inch brownie pan with parchment paper and coat with non-stick cooking spray.

In the bowl of an electric stand mixer, combine the melted margarine, cocoa powder, oil, sugar, flour, eggs and vanilla. Beat to combine.

Spread the mixture into the prepared pan.

Bake for 35-40 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and place into the refrigerator for 20 minutes or until cool enough to handle.

When the brownies are cool, run a knife around the edge of the pan. Flip the brownie out onto a piece of parchment paper on a hard word surface in one whole piece. Using a 1 1/2 inch diameter round cookie cutter, cut circles from the center of the brownie, leaving the harder crust. Roll the circles between the palms of your hands to form into balls, and roll into coating of your choice.

Store in airtight container.

Over to you, Dad!

The Baking Sisters’ father is glad to be back for a guest blog. When Sarah graduated from college and returned home with her ice cream maker, I decided to experiment. (I guess it’s in my blood, since my father owned a drive-in ice cream store when I was growing up, and I worked there every summer when I was a teenager.) This recipe was one of my best finds.

Everyone knows that there are two kinds of strawberries: those made for travelling and those made for eating. The travelling kind – the ones you get in the supermarket year-round that are bred to make it across the country in one piece – look beautiful but are hard and white on the inside and have no taste. The eating kind are small, sometimes misshapen, but red all the way through and almost oozing sweet juice. So while summer lasts, get to a greenmarket or farm stand and buy some locally-grown berries. Then turn them into this amazing strawberry sorbet with flavor even more intense than the berries themselves. You can make it with “travelling” berries, but why bother?

This recipe is adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz. It makes about 4 cups.

1-1/3 lbs. (yes, pounds) fresh strawberries, rinsed and hulled

1 cup sugar

1-1/3 tsp. kirsch (optional, but it adds a nice punch)

1-1/3 tsp. freshly-squeezed lemon juice

Pinch of salt

Slice the strawberries and toss them in a medium bowl with the sugar and kirsch, stirring until the sugar begins to dissolve. Cover and let stand for one hour, stirring every so often.

Puree the strawberries and their liquid with the lemon juice and salt in a blender or food processor until smooth (I prefer the blender). There is no need to strain out the seeds.

Chill the mixture thoroughly, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Enjoy, and plan to make more soon, since this batch won’t last.

Brownie? Biscotti? Cookie? Delicious!

Let my recounting of New Year's Shabbat continue. As part of the dessert platter (see here for more on that), I wanted to do a twist on the chocolate white chocolate chip cookies that are always very popular. Sure enough, opening up my new Kosher by Design cookbook, there was a biscotti version of those delicious cookies, so I decided to give them a spin.

I definitely endorse the Chocolate Chocolate Chip Sticks. They are super easy to make and they have a texture that is brownie-like without the same degree of density and richness. I made them with the white chocolate chips, which I thought was a nice balance of sweetness, but those who like intense chocolate would probably like them even better with regular chocolate chips. Just two pieces of advice: First, these burn around the edges pretty easily, so watch them carefully. Second, don't make the logs wider than 4 inches, because otherwise they fall apart when you cut them. Follow this advice and you'll end up with a delicious treat!

1 1/2cups flour
3/4cup dutch cocoa
1 tsp b. soda
1/2tsp fine sea salt
3/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup white choc or c. chips
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350
Mix flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. Set aside
Mix oil,sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Mix in the egg
Stir in half cocoa mix until dough forms. Stir in rest of cocoa mixture, knead dough with both hands for one minute. Mix in c.chips & walnuts. Use hands to knead them in dough.
Transform dough into two logs 3-4inches wide
Bake for 25min

Doing My Part to Help Pass the Bar: Part 1

You may remember my friend Brooke.  She has been mentioned a few times around this blog, most notably as the source of my mandelbrot recipe.  Brooke is studying for the bar for a second time, since she moved since she first took it. Those of you who are lawyers or who know lawyers know that studying for the bar is no fun, especially if you are also working full time, as Brooke is.

Last time Brooke was studying for the bar, we were living near each other and I was able to go and give her little pep talks in person.  This time, we live across the country from each other, and telling her to study via gchat doesn't always work.

So, I decided to motivate her to study by bribing her with cookies.  If she is very good, and does her studying like she is supposed to, instead of watching West Wing, she will get cookies.  If not, well...we won't go there.

Brooke's first care package contained two kinds of yummy treats.  First, since Brooke loves brownies and dark chocolate, I choose Dorie Greenspan's Bittersweet brownies.  These are chock full of dark chocolate and have a great, rich, fudgy texture.  I highly recommend these if you like dark chocolate.  The recipe is here, which I made without the raspberries. 

The second cookie was created because I found mint truffle filled hershey kisses.  Brooke loves mint and dark chocolate, so I knew I had to incorporate them somehow.  I had seen peanut butter cookies with kisses pushed into them, so I thought I would do something like that.  In the end, I decided on mint chocolate crinkle cookies with mint chocolate kisses.  These were delicious -- minty and fudgy, with good chocolate flavor.  The recipe called for them to be rolled in confectioners sugar and green sugar, which I did, but you can't see the green very well.  Either way, I highly recommend these cookies.  They were easy to make (my 2.5 year old helped out) and very, very yummy.  You can find the recipe here.

Brooke -- if you take a break from studying (a short one), let us know what you thought and if they got to you in one piece.  Good luck on the bar (leave her some love to help motivate her if the cookies don't work)!

I Cook Like Betty Crocker and I Look Like Donna Reed

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Shabbos Kallah programming to bring you this breaking update: it's Halloween! Kids dress like monsters, girls dress like sluts and we all get diabetes. Huzzah!

Since I am in college, the party's pretty much been going on all weekend. Last night I dressed up as Donna Reed, the quintessential 1950s housewife (as any Gilmore Girls fan knows), which meant that I wore a poofy-skirted dress, an apron, heels, and a slightly manic look. And of course I had to have baked goods, because surely Donna would never go to a party without them!

And since it was Halloween they had to be thematic. Inspired by the King Arthur Flour blog, I tried to make my brownies look like a spiderweb but they ended up looking more like a pretty floral design. I had a lot of trouble piping the cream cheese mixture; I guess I got overconfident about my piping skills after my last two highly successful endeavors. As my roommate Abi pointed out, it's okay - sometimes, scientists give spiders crystal meth in order to show kids the effect of drugs on brain and behavior, and their webs come out looking a bit wonky too. I think I just didn't make the spokes sufficiently even but it was hard to drag the knife through the viscous brownie batter. Oh well, it still tasted deliciously fudgy, as this recipe always does! (I didn't put in the optional mint extract so the cream cheese didn't really change the taste or texture at all.) Also, I left out the chocolate chips, which I think was a wise move, since they just would have gotten in the way of the knife. Also also, if unlike me you can find black licorice within five miles of your home, I would definitely recommend making the little cookie spider they have on the Web site to go along with the brownies so that if yours also doesn't turn out looking very weblike, people will have a hint. Even if I'll never truly be a perfect housewife, the brownies were better than that horrid-looking Jell-O concoction Rory made for Dean on their Donna Reed night. So there.

You can find the recipe here. Happy Halloween!

Sad Day? Happy Brownies!

It's been one of those days. As in one of those Worst Days Ever. I knew it wouldn't be a fun weekend because I'm cramming for my exams, which are tomorrow and Tuesday, but today was particularly bad. It all came to a head at around 1:30. My wireless connection is laughable, except that today I wasn't laughing, because I really needed it to be working so I could access JStor, and apparently it was having one of its Worst Days Ever too. As of 1:30 it hadn't been working except in sporadic 30-second bursts for the last three hours. 1:30 was also the time when my downstairs neighbor, of whom I have never been a fan to say the least, decided it would be a great time to blast his music at full volume even though he has exams tomorrow along with everyone else in the house. I truly could not concentrate, even though I was reviewing one of my favorite topics, and I decided I needed to do something about it.

Brownies.

I decided to go with a simple, Dorie-tested recipe that I've made a million times before; plus, I added M&Ms just for the hell of it. They're not the greatest brownies I've ever tasted but they're easy and reliable and they were just what I needed on a day like today. As I've mentioned before, I'm a stress baker, and not because I become a stress eater as soon as the goods come out of the oven. For me, it's always been about the sheer mechanical repetitiveness of it. If you melt this much chocolate with this much butter, if you measure out this much baking soda and add it to this much flour, if you put it all together and apply this much heat, this miraculous alchemical process will occur and in the end you'll have something totally amazing and new. If you just follow the instructions mindlessly, you won't go wrong. It's the exact opposite of the breadth and unpredictability and adrenaline and mental exhaustion of an exam, and thus it's an antidote. I don't think I'll ever become a really unique, creative or ambitious baker, because for me the pleasure in baking is knowing what will happen at the end, no surprises. Maybe I'll make something totally decadent and crazy after exams are over but for now it's got to be a simple brownie recipe.

I wish I could end this with some pat statement like "Suddenly, as I put the brownie in my mouth, things didn't seem so bad." The truth is, the second half of the day was just as crappy as the first half. I went to the supermarket to buy some ingredients for a fish dinner and somehow forgot the fish, and so had to go back again in the rain. When I got back the door scraped across my ankle and sliced it open, and it's been turning Band-Aids (or as they call them here, plasters) red ever since. I'm incapable of getting my practice essays up to the length they should be within the allotted hour. Plus, the brownie pan was too big so I had cut its volume in half with a folded piece of aluminum foil, and I'm pretty sure I ended up eating some aluminum foil by accident. But I know now that if I need a break, there are brownies downstairs. And that's something.

Classic Brownies - adapted from Dorie Greenspan

5 tbs. unsalted butter, cut into pieces
4 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
¾ cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
¼ tsp salt
1/3 cup all purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Line an 8” square pan with foil and either butter the foil or spray it with nonstick spray.

In a medium sized saucepan, over very low heat, combine the butter and chocolates. Stir until just melted and smooth, then remove from the heat. Stir in the sugar, then whisk in the eggs, one at a time. Add the vanilla, and gently stir in the salt and flour just until incorporated. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a tester just about comes clean. Be very careful not to overbake. Transfer the pan to a wire rack to cool completely, then use the foil to remove the brownies from the pan and cut into squares.

Yield – 16 brownies.

Now that that's over...Brrr-ownies

Now that Passover is over, I am so happy to be back to baking with flour and other yummy ingredients.  I ran into one glitch, which is that my mixer is still in its Passover location -- on top of the closet -- and it is too heavy for me to take down alone (husband is away).  I knew the baking had to be something that I could make without a mixer and these brownies fit the bill.

I have made these once before, with chopped peppermint patties and the patties kind of dissolved into the batter.  This time, I used York Peppermint Pattie Premiere Baking Pieces (I found them in the chocolate chip asile) which worked much better since they did not dissolve.  I think it had something to do with all the mint being surrounded by chocolate, which helps it keep its shape in the brownie.

These were good, but I thought that the mint flavor kind of overwhelmed the chocolate flavor.  I would like a little more balance, but for those who love mint, these are for you.  They are very frosty!  Don't be alarmed if they come out kind of flat.  That is just what they look like.

Recipe after the jump.

An Exercise in Contrasts: Blondie Brownies

Of all of the people in my family (in-laws excluded), I am probably the one least likely to choose the chocolate dessert when there is another option. If it's made with high quality dark chocolate, I am embarrassed to say that I probably won't like it. However, the exception for me is brownies from a box. I know, not especially dignified, but sooo delicious.


That being said, if I'm having company, I feel like I owe them better than that. So this is one of my favorites: a layer of blondies (aka chocolate chip cookie batter in disguise), topped with a layer of brownies. The last time I served them, one of my friends told me to "blog the [expletive] out of them." So there you go. Enjoy!


Blondie Brownie Bars:


1 box of brownie mix (make sure it's the kind that fits a 9 x 13 pan), with all required ingredients


2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
1/4 cup skim milk
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) chocolate chips


Preheat the oven to 350.


Prepare the brownies as instructed by the box. Set aside.


Mix the butter, vanilla, eggs, milk, and both types of sugar until well blended. Add the dry ingredients and mix. Add the chocolate chips and mix the batter until the chips are evenly distributed.


In a 9 x 13 pan, evenly spread the cookie batter through the pan. Pour the brownie batter on top and spread evenly. Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes, or until the middle is solid and a toothpick comes out clean. Be careful-- these are really thick, so they might need more time than that, depending on your oven.


Allow to cool before cutting and serving.

Truffle Brownies (for Valentine's Day?)

Yes, I am aware that Valentine's Day was last week.  However, I actually made these on Valentine's Day (the Lindt Truffles were on sale) but didn't have time to post on them.  I saw this recipe on She's Becoming DoughtMessTic, a great baking/parenting blog (actually she was guest posting on another blog) and I have been wanting to make them ever since.  Usually I am a take it or leave it person when it comes to truffles and chocolates, but I totally love Lindt Truffles and anything that combines those with brownies sounds good to me.

These brownies were good -- not my favorite brownie recipe -- but solid.  They were not that chocolate-y (my husband liked them, which is pretty much proof).  The only thing about them is that the truffles really melted into the brownies and didn't hold their shape, so I thought it was kind of a waste of yummy truffles.  However, they were lots of fun to make, especially cutting up the truffles.  I used the milk chocolate ones, but the truffles might be more noticeable if you use a combination of flavors.  It may have been that the milk chocolate was too mild for the brownies.  

These were nice for Valentine's Day, as I think the truffles were very Valentine's Day like.  If you like combining candy with your baked treats, these are for you!

You can find the recipe here.

Cute as a Brownie Button

The first time that I made these, it was for my seven-year old campers at Camp Yomi, and I feel like that is the best possible use for these. I don't mean that as a slight - it's just that these brownies are cute and simple and manageable, perfect for little kids. Yet they also can be sophisticated when arranged prettily on a dessert plate.

This time around, I just made them for fun, because they're also fun. It's fun to pop them out of their little pan holes. It's fun to dip them in white chocolate and give them a little twirl. It's fun to eat them! (And you don't have to feel guilty because they're so small.) Taste-wise, they're good, though nothing that special, but I kept them in the fridge, where they attained a fudgy consistency that compounded the richness of the white chocolate. Yum!

Brownie Buttons
from “Baking From my Home to Yours” by Dorie Greenspan

Grated zest of 1/2 Orange
1 teaspoon Sugar
1/4 Cup plus 2 Tablespoons Flour
Pinch of Salt
1/2 Stick (4 Tablespoons) Unsalted Butter, Cut into 4 Pieces
2 1/2 Ounces Bittersweet Chocolate, Coarsely Chopped
1/3 Cup (Packed) Brown Sugar
1/2 teaspoon Pure Vanilla Extract
1 Large Egg

For the optional Glaze:
2 Ounces White Chocolate, Finely Chopped

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly butter two miniature muffin pans, each with a dozen cups, and place them on a baking sheet.

If you’re using the orange zest, combine the zest and sugar in a small bowl, rubbing them between your fingertips to blend: set aside. Whisk together the flour and salt.

Melt the butter, chocolate, and brown sugar in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan over very low heat, stirring frequently with a heatproof spatula and keeping an eye on the pan so that nothing overheats or burns. When the mixture is smooth, remove from the heat and cool for a minute or two. Stir the vanilla, egg and the zest into the chocolate mixture. When the mixture is well blended, add the flour and stir only until it is incorporated. You should have a smooth, glossy batter.

Spoon the batter into 16 of the muffin cups, using about a teaspoon of batter to fill each cup 3/4 full. Put 1 teaspoon of water in each empty cup.
Bake for 14-16 minutes, or until the tops of the buttons spring back when touched. Transfer the pans to racks to cool for 3 minutes before carefully releasing the buttons. Cool to room temperature on the racks.

To make the glaze: Melt the chocolate over a double boiler. Stir constantly and don’t leave the chocolate for even one minute- white chocolate scorches easily. As soon as the chocolate is smooth, remove from the heat.

One by one, dip the tops of the buttons into the chocolate, twirling the buttons so that you get a little swirl at the center of each one and the excess chocolate drips back into the bowl. Refrigerate the buttons for 15 minutes to set the glaze.

Stress Baking: The Baked Brownie

My husband claims that I do something called stress baking.  When there is a lot going on, and I am stressed out, I bake.  I guess it is better than stress eating or stress shopping, since I send most of the baked goods to my husband's office, but I think he might be right about the stress baking.  There is a lot going on in my life right now, a lot of which I can't control, so baking it is!

I recently got the Baked cookbook (ok, I do engage in some stress shopping, but it is mostly books) and they claim to have the best brownie in America.  I have never been there to taste the version in their bakery, but they have the recipe in their book, so I decided to make them. 

This was, hands down, the most complicated brownie recipe I have ever made.  I am the "put everything in a bowl and stir" kind of girl and these brownies were definitely not those.  It involves melting, putting things in side bowls and folding things with a spatula.  That being said, since the purpose of making them was stress relief, it was better that they took a long time.  

I don't know how these were supposed to look (they were less shiny on top than other brownies I have made) but they smelled really good.  I didn't taste them the day I made them and I sent most of them to my husband's office, but I ate one out of the freezer.  It was good, but I'm not sure if it is better than other brownies out there.  Maybe that is because it was frozen?  Not sure.  I'll have to do a taste test when I am patient enough to let them defrost.   

Here is the recipe:

The Baked Brownie from Baked – New Frontiers in Baking

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons dark unsweetened cocoa powder
11 ounces dark chocolate (60 to 72% cacao), coarsely chopped
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 teaspoon instant espresso powder
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
5 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter the sides and bottom of a 9 x 13 glass or light-colored metal baking pan. 

In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, salt and cocoa powder. Put the chocolate, butter, and instant espresso powder in a large bowl and set it over a saucepan of simmering water, stirring occasionally, until the chocolate and butter are completely melted and smooth. Turn off the heat, but keep the bowl over the water and add the sugars. Whisk until completely combined, then remove the bowl from the pan. The mixture should be room temperature. 

Add 3 eggs to the chocolate mixture and whisk until combined. Add the remaining eggs and whisk until combined. Add the vanilla and stir until combined. Do not overbeat the batter at this stage or your brownies will be cakey. 

Sprinkle the flour mixture over the chocolate mixture. Using a spatula (not a whisk), fold the flour mixture into the chocolate until just a bit of the flour mixture is visible. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake in the center of the oven for 30 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the baking time, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the brownies comes out with a few moist crumbs sticking to it. 

Let the brownies cool completely, then cut them into squares and serve. Tightly covered with plastic wrap, the brownies keep at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Adventures with the Ice Cream Maker: Ben & Jerry's Got There First

Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream by Ben & Jerrys has always been one of my favorite ice cream flavors. You see, I am not a big fan of stuff in my ice cream, since I don't generally like to bite on hard chunks while eating it (exceptions were made for this ice cream, since it is just too good), so Chocolate Fudge Brownie is perfect because it has the brownies in it, but they are soft.

I decided to make my own, since it is still very warm here (80 degrees in November -- WHAT?!?!). I used Philadelphia Style chocolate ice cream (no eggs, no custard to make, which saves time) from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop. Then I made a box of Ghirardelli brownie mix and allowed it to cool. Yes, I could have made them from scratch, but I had the mix, so it was just easier. When the brownies were cool, I cut it into small squares (really, really small) and also crumbled some up and I put it into the ice cream in the last minute of churnning. In retrospect, I think I put the brownies in a bit too early, because many of them turned into crumbs, instead of staying in chunks, but it was still delicious. The brownies were still soft even when the ice cream was frozen, and the whole thing had an intense chocolate flavor that was almost over the top (but not quite).

Here is the ice cream recipe:

Chocolate Ice Cream (Philadelphia Style)

2 ¼ cups heavy cream

6 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

1 cup sugar

Pinch of salt

6 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped

1 cup whole milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Whisk together the cream, cocoa powder, sugar, and salt in a large saucepan. Heat the mixture, whisking frequently, until it comes to a full, rolling boil (it will start to foam up). Remove from the heat and whisk un the chocolate until it’s completely melted, then whisk in the milk and vanilla. Pour the mixture into a blender and blend for 30 seconds, until very smooth.

Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Brownies and Cookies and Baking, Oh My!

Everybody loves brownies. Everybody also loves cookies. And sometimes, it's just too hard to choose. Luckily, the immortal Dorie Greenspan has saved us from deprivation and decision-making by creating Chipster-Topped Brownies.

Sarah baked the delightful duo with some old friends from Hebrew high school. Hebrew high school forms lifelong bonds of friendship and a love of Jewish learning/eating artery-clogging crap. If you would like to know the nutritional value of our Chipster-Topped Brownies (you don't), all you have to do is observe the photo below (credit to my friend Alex):


Notice the additional butter lurking innocently in the corner. But enough of that.

Now, anyone who has ever baked a lot in college knows that dorm baking is all about improvisation — or, if you prefer, "ghettoness." This is the only way that the Baking Sisters are every going to get ghetto street cred, so we will go with it. In any case, this particular baking session took place in a dorm, which lacked a mixer and any measurement instruments smaller than one cup, yet we persevered. This became problematic when it came to beating the butter, because the butter is supposed to be beaten until it is smooth and creamy and instead we sort of just mashed it with our hands until it submitted. I wonder if this caused a dearth of volume in our cookie batter, because when I've made these in the past the cookie layer has fully covered the brownie layer, and there was not enough to do that this time. (It may also have been that, in true ghetto fashion, we were not equipped with a rubber spatula to spread the batter.)

Luckily, despite all these hardships, the CTBs came out deliciously. These are VERY rich, so be sure to cut them into very small pieces!