BROWNIES : GUILT BY ASSOCIATION

I have faithfully been making these brownies off the side of the Frys cocoa tin for several years now and I'd never really bothered to change up the recipe very much - why fix what is decidedly un-broken? However last night I decided to make things a little more interesting...with whole hazelnuts and way too much time on my hands, the kitchen was my oyster. Even if I dont like oysters.

1 1/3 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. butter
1 c. cocoa
2 c. sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
preferred nuts

Prehead your oven to 350. OR DIE TRYING.

I. Stir together flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Meanwhile, melt butter in a large saucepan.
II. When liquid, remove from heat and add cocoa. Mix untill no lumps remain. Stir in sugar and eggs, one at a time. (I don't know what it was, but 4 eggs seemed somehow rediculous so I substituted the last egg for an egg-sized lump of apple sauce. It occured to me later that I could have done that instead of the TWO CUPS of sugar, but genius is a lazy bitch.)
III. Add the vanilla and pour into the flour mix, bit by bit so you don't get those dreaded flour-pockets at the bottom. Pour into a pan and toss in whatever nuts you desire. Mix about and then bake for ~40 minutes.
(Check it at 30. For some reason I put them in for 25 the first time around and it actually jiggled when I picked up the pan, so I sent it back for another 15. They were crunchy around the edges but still gooey and sticky on the bottoms. That's more like it.)

ps. I also ended up making a video about them on YouTube. You can check it out here.
-->http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKY0K3SOJKM

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I know that we've all got our favourite recipe for chocolate chip cookies (or maybe that's just me) but Erin's Cake Odyssey has peaked the interest in baking by weight. Meag's got this British cookbook that I got her for Christmas a couple of years ago and she wanted to make these cookies for Graham out of it. They turned out like little puffballs and, you guessed it, a little bland. Well, subtle anyway.

150 g unsalted butter
1/4 c soft brown sugar
1/3 c caster sugar
1 egg yolk
1 t vanilla
1 1/2 c self-raising flour
1/2 c dark chocolate bits
1/2 c milk chocolate bits

Beat wet together. Add flour and 1/2 of the chocolate bits and stir until just combined. Use your hands to press the mixture together to form a soft dough.

Roll lever tablespoons of the mixture into balls. Press the remaining chocolate bits firmly onto the tops of the balls. Bake for 15 minutes or until crisp and lightly browned and then cool on the trays.

Like I said, little bubbles but they looked really cute when I put them back to back, wrapped them in cello and a twist for the bake sale table at Irish Fest. They looked like a little candy. Shame about the flavour, I expected something a little richer.

Ice! Cream! Yaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

This has been on my 100 List from the first whack at it and I finally tried it!  Twice!  I wanted to take a lovely food porn picture of that ice cream but I just couldn't make it last that long, thank God we've still got some at Erin's (maybe).

Mocha Chip Ice Cream (10 x 1/2 cup servings)

1 c whole milk, well chilled
3/4 c granulated sugar
1 1/2 T cocoa powder
1 1/2 T instant espresso powder
2 cups heavy cream, well chilled
1 t vanilla extract (I have a heavy hand with it though)
4 oz chopped up semi-sweet chocolate

Beat milk, sugar, cocoa and espresso into the stand mixer and let it beat for about a minute on "low".  Stir in cream and vanilla.  Turn the ice cream machine on and then pour the stuff in (VERY important that the machine be already running when you start pouring the stuff in because those freezer chests are REALLY cold and it will block up the beater if you don't have it in motion already).  Beat for about 20 minutes, till it's recognizably ice cream but it's not frozen solid yet and then pour the chocolate into the top and let it stir for another 5 minutes.  Pour it into a bowl and put it in the freezer to firm up a bit.  It was... divine.

The blueberry frozen yogurt was a little more spontaneous.  We mixed 2 cups of vanilla yogurt (well, technically 1 3/4 cup vanilla and 1/4 c plain), 1 cup of whole milk (was supposed to be 1/2 cup but I made a mistake and no one noticed), a GENEROUS splash of vanilla (I didn't mean it to be quite so generous but...) and about 1 1/2 cups of frozen blueberries.  The recipe that I found said that you were supposed to puree and strain the berries but I threw them in whole and frozen and it worked out just fine.  Bright purple but tasty.

Tror du att kärlek är som sångerna vi...baka?

Vackert / Cakesters

(For those of you who aren't in with the Swedish language, le titre reads "Do you think love is like the songs we...bake?". Stay tuned to find out why!)

I don't actually know where this recipe came from. Like countless other white sheets of printer paper scrawled upon with marker and/or crayon, it must have been copied down while I was at the computer. If that works as a good prelude for the quality of these cookies (Small cakes? Gâtettes?!), then you're on the right track. The only clue I'd left for myself was the word "Vackert", Swedish for "Beautiful", which had been crossed out and a new title, "CAKESTERS" had been scribbled in green crayola. Beautiful? Hm. These must taste good. So, on a boring Saturday, my boyfriend Daniel and I rolled up our sleeves are prepared to taste beauty.

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the.crust
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2 eggs, beaten
1 c. of veg. oil

3 c. flour

1. t baking soda
8 T cocoa
2 c. brown sugar

1 t salt

1 c. milk

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the.filling

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1 c. shortening
1 1/3 c. milk
2 c. confectioners sugar

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and.here's.the.poop
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{{{ HAY YOU! THIS IS FOR THE CRUST! }}}
I. Preheat yer oven to a balmy 350c.
II. Sift all of your dry ingi's together in what will be your master bowl.
III. In a smaller bowl, add all your "wet" ingi's together.
IV. Pour together and grab yourself a good old fashioned wooden spoon. None of that fancy "stand mixer" crap, no sirree. (Kay fine. Use your stand mixers.)
V. Letter' rip until smooth as the cats pyjamas. It should be a vaguely cookie like consistency, if memory serves.
VI. Drop onto a cookie sheet about the size of half a doughnut rolled into like, a ball. (I actually had to sit and think about the size for awhile and this was the best thing I could come up with. Seriously guys.) ...or slightly smaller than a hockey puck. Remember, two of these makes one cookie - so make them thin. (Top + bottom, like a hamburger.)
VII. Give those suckers some hot hot love for anywhere from 5 -7 minutes and let cool on a wire rack. We want these to be crispy and NOT soft at all.

OOoh yeaaah - Step one? COMPLETE. Give yourself a big pat on the back and a run round' the block because these babies are...well. Did you even read the ingredients?

{{{ ALRIGHT NOW LETS GET THAT FILLING DONE! }}}

I. Um...Mix it all together until one solid, creamy blob. I suppose if you were feeling sexy and rebellious, you could add some coconut, sprinkles (Danny squealed like a tiny Japanese schoolgirl, so we added rainbow-balls.) or food-dye, if you're into that sort of thing.

{{{ 1 + 1 = ...3??!! }}}

I. So, just like a hamburger, assemble as such. Only this time around, its a hamburger made of cake. Crust on the bottom, filling, crust on the top. Lather, rinse, repeat.

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the.finish-line
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Well, we had the infallible equation of "small chocolate cakes" + "filling" = "Oh god. I need new pants." going for us, but sadly for the indomitable kitchen duo of Danny and Kato, math is dumb. Vakert/Cakesters taught us that EVERYTHING WE KNOW IS WRONG. They were incredibly rich and addictive...but just not. very. good. We haven't made them since, but maybe with a bit of tweaking, they might put stupid math back in its stupid place.

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~ stay fresh everyone. Until next time. ~
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Cedar Plank Salmon and Hot Fudge Monday

Our fish was a little further along in the process than the one in the picture but all of the pictures of cedar plank salmon were boring. So I've never tried this method of cooking fish before and I bought the Tyee Fish Rub without tasting it first. I mixed some into about a 1/4 cup of olive oil until it was sort of somewhere in between sauce and paste. I soaked the planks in a big bowl in my bathtub for about 6 hours then I rubbed a little oil over them, put the salmon down and covered them with paste (and doesn't that sound appetizing?) Threw them into the oven at 325 F (found that number on the net, I didn't know if it was supposed to be a really hot over or not) for about 25 minutes.

After about 10 minutes, Meag came out and predicted that we would soon be hearing from the smoke detector. I didn't know that cedar planks, as they dry in the over, warp upwards into an arch (as opposed to warping downward into a bowl). This meant that, as the fish cooked and released some of the juices with the olive oil mixed in (it's not always attractive but it's really tasty), they were sliding down the arch and dropping to the superhot oven floor. So, note to self: next time you're cooking cedar plank salmon, put a cookie sheet on the rack below.

We never did hear from the smoke detector and if someone can explain to me why I can fill the entire room with acrid woodsmoke it doesn't do a damn thing yet when Meag is boiling water for pasta, we're having to fan it with towels every five minutes, I will bake them their own Triple Ginger Pound Cake.

To console myself over all of the smoke (and because I was having a chocolate jones) I made Hot Fudge Monday. You know those Dr. Oetker Cake & Sauce packages, they come in chocolate, apple, lemon, caramel, etc? It's just like that only you know what's going into it (not that I don't trust Dr. Oetker, he invented baking powder, you know)

Hot Fudge Monday (6 servings)

Cake: 1 cup flour
3/4 cup unpacked brown sugar
1 1/2 T unsweetened cocoa powder
2 t baking powder (thank you Dr. Oetker!)
1/4 t salt
1/2 cup skim milk
2 T vegetable oil

Sauce: 1 cup unpacked brown sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 3/4 cups boiling water

Prepare the cake batter, the original recipe does the separate dry and wet mixing but I just threw them all in a bowl and it worked out just fine. Spread batter evenly in an ungreased 8"x8" baking pan (I've only tried it in pyrex).

Mix the brown sugar and cocoa for the sauce together and sprinkle them evenly over the top of the cake batter. Pour the boiling water gently over the top but don't stir it in (very important!). Bake @ 350 F for 40-45 minutes and then let it stand for about 5 minutes before serving warm. Spoon the sauce from the bottom of the pan over the individual servings of cake. (Only 17% fat)

Oh, yeah. The salmon was f---ing amazing. I ate my first piece of it while standing and dishing the food out onto the plates. It was that good.