Brownies

This weekend I tried my hand at the Chewy, Fudgey, Triple Chocolate Brownies in Baking Illustrated. There were two reasons I chose this particular recipe. First today is our friend Mandy's birthday, she loves brownies so I wanted to make them for her. Second my Aunt Cathy sent me this awesome brownie pan for my birthday that I just had to try out. It is called the Bakers Edge Brownie Pan and it gives each and every brownie at least two crispy/chewy edges which I love.






The recipe calls for three types of chocolate, unsweetened, semisweet, and cocoa powder. You melt the chocolate with one stick of butter before adding to the eggs, sugar, vanilla and only one cup of flour. Due to the minimal amount of flour I expected the brownies to be very fudgey (which is how I like them) but they turned out somewhere in the middle of fudgey and cakey leaning more towards cakey. They were very tasty but I was not happy with the texture. I am wondering if they may have baked too long. The instructions for the pan warns that the brownies will bake much faster than those baked in traditional brownie pans. I think I will try this recipe again with the new pan and with a traditional pan to see if that makes a difference.


The pan did make a cool design which is photo worthy. I really like the pan a lot, just need to do some experimenting and adjust the cooking time. Cathy also sent me a peanut butter brownie recipe that she created that I will make for Peter sometime soon.

Thank you Aunt Cathy for such a cool gift!

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

This past Sunday was so beautiful, the weather was perfect! My parents and brother came over to celebrate my birthday. They brought me my favorite flowers, tulips, which made me so happy.




I grilled out for the first time this season and and we all enjoyed a Sunday Afternoon beer on the porch, Lucy included! I am so looking forward to spring!

Saturday Evening with Great Friends

Last evening Peter and I had several friends over to spend some time with Jun, a friend who now lives in NYC. Everyone had a great time and the kids (OK, and the adults) were up way past their bed time.

The food was excellent as always, we do have some great cooks in this group. Unfortunately I did not take photos of everything.....I need to get better about that. But we had beef and cheese roll ups, spinach & artichoke dip, white pizza dip, mac & cheese, and ham & cheese tarts. Delicious!

For this gathering I tested out two recipe's out of my new cookbook Baking Illustrated.

Classic Oatmeal raisin.

Personally I am not a big fan of Oatmeal Raisin (especially the raisin part) however these looked great and the recipe was thorough and easy to follow. They were gobbled up pretty fast and the boys even got into the secret stash with extras that I had in the pantry.

Thick & Chewy Double Chocolate Cookies

Now this one is more up my ally. These cookies are boarder line sinful!! Moist and chewy they are almost brownie like. Also, the chocolate flavor is spot on. This recipe was again very thorough and I am really enjoying the notes before every recipe in this book, it helps to ensure the recipe turns out well every time. This one was a bit more difficult to put together, several steps are involved and then the dough has to rest for 30 minutes before baking.

I also put together an antipasto platter with all sorts of treats. Prosciutto, Salami, Olives, etc. The cheese was an Irish Cheddar with Porter and was surprisingly tasty, although not as appealing to the eye. I also made an herbed goat cheese from the Dinner Party's magazine I picked up last weekend which also turned out well.

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Clean Out the Fridge Pasta

This is a first for me, I am actually writing this blog as I am making dinner......let's pray I don't burn anything!


Tonight I am making what I call "Clean out the Fridge Pasta".......I know, I know....... very Rachel Ray of me and for this I apologize. I do this once a month or so when I do not have a meal planned. Although this particular Fridge Pasta is loosely based off a recipe in Everyday Food called Rigatoni with Sausage & Parsley and when I say loosely I mean that, basically the similarities end at sausage and parsley.


Tonight the treasures I am working with are of course pasta, mini-ziti to be exact, red onion, green pepper, freshly grated Parmesan, hot turkey Italian sausage and left over prime rib which I made on Sunday night. For the sauce pinot grigio with a tad of butter. Delicious!

My last post of the evening

Three post in one night, that is a record for me but I wanted to make sure to get all my thoughts down.

I can not wait to find some time this week/ weekend to make some recipes from my two new resources.

Yesterday I picked up Dinner Parties, from the editors of Fine Cooking. It is one of those special edition magazines and I want to make just about every recipe in it!

And the other Peter gave me as an early birthday gift. Baking Illustrated, by the editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine, a book I have been wanting for some time. It is full of great recipes but also gives amazing information on what to do and what not to do with every recipe. I am ecstatic about this book!

My never ending quest for exciting breakfast food

I have decided that I LOVE breakfast food, really I do.....and why is this surprising? Basically because I have struggled with the first meal of the day my whole life. For much of my almost 29 years I did not eat breakfast at all. But, for about the past year, I have been trying very hard to eat breakfast and not just drink a half pot of coffee.

The challenges for me are many. I am really not hungry for at least an hour or two after waking up, I don't like cereal, and I do not have a lot of time in the morning to prepare breakfast. I also go back and forth with eggs, well at least I used too until I discovered that I really just don't like scrambled eggs (unless they are covered with a generous amount of cheese), but I really do enjoy eggs over medium with toast, or an egg white omelet.

With all of that being said I am constantly looking for new breakfast recipes that I can make ahead and will still keep me interested in eating the meal. Yesterday I found one of my best yet on epicurious.com. It is Breakfast Risotto, http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/240748. I have never made risotto before and I can't wait to do it again, what fun! I took some of the suggestions in the comments section and added the liquid slowly as you do with traditional risotto. Also, this morning I topped it with an over medium egg......DELICIOUS! So good actually that I thought about it all day and had it again for dinner!

Before the liquid is added.

Half way through adding the liquid.

Finished product.