De Baking Psychopath

In yet another example of food blogger fads, which I am uncharacteristically very happy to follow, here is a recipe from the much-anticipated cookbook by the Fat Witch Bakery that just hit the shelves less than a month ago. They specialize in brownies of all sorts and flavors. Another bakery to put on the list for our future potential revisits to NYC! These brownies had the thickest crackly-shiny top that I've ever made in homemade brownies! They had a nice mild chocolate flavor and more of a moist cakey texture than probably the original fudgy brownies were (many reviewers of the book on Amazon actually complained about the cakey texture). I think this texture is due to the lower-than-normal chocolate content and a good number of eggs (four). I think next time I will retry these brownies with one less egg, as one of my brownie-connoisseur taste-testers suggested, and this may do the trick for getting slightly chewier/fudgier brownies. Although these were tasty just the way th...

I recently made a batch of brownies and baked them up in the square muffin pans to see how they'd turn out. The pans were marketed as a brownie and bar cookie pan, and you can see the appeal that this would have for brownie crust-lovers. Each piece with four sides of crust!! How did they turn out? Okay. The brownies tasted good and were nicely set without being overdone. The crust on each edge was present but not very substantial...I am not sure whether this had to do with not enough cooking time (i.e. if I had filled each cup a little more and required a longer period of baking in order to get the center set, would the edges have built up more by then?) or the particular qualities of the box mix brownies I was trying to use up and used for this test. In any case, I ended up with 12 perfectly portioned brownies, no cutting necessary! And they came out of the pan fairly easily (with a little help from a bit of parchment paper at the bottom of each cup). So for the reason alon...

I gotta say, that Dorie Greenspan knows a thing or two about brownies. I recently discovered her Tribute to Katherine Hepburn Brownies , and the Tuesdays with Dorie group lately baked en masse what can only be described as two of Michael's favorite desserts in one: espresso cheesecake and homemade brownies!! I think the decision making process to make these brownies went something like this: "Michael, Michael!! Look at these!" "Oohhh..." "Do you want me to make them?" "Okay!" Espresso Cheesecake Brownies (adapted from Baking: From my home to yours , by Dorie Greenspan) Preheat oven to 350 degrees and set the oven rack to the center position. Grease and line with parchment paper a 9 inch square pan. Ingredients for brownies: 1/2 cup all purpose flour 1/4 teaspoon baking powder pinch of salt 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into cubes 4 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, chopped 1/3 cup sugar 2 large eggs 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract Instruct...

There are good brownies. And then there are OMG-THESE-ARE-SO-GOOD brownies. These are the latter. The recipe comes from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours and are entitled "Tribute to Katherine Hepburn Brownies." I've seen the introductory blurb to the recipe quoted on other people's blogs, and basically, the Oscar-winning actress was famous for her brownies and was noted in a story to impart the wisdom of not putting too much flour in brownies. Dorie adapted versions of the famed recipe and added the variation of cinnamon, instant coffee, and bittersweet chocolate chunks. Have I mentioned that I love cinnamon?! Maybe a couple of times. Figure 1. Dark, rich brownie batter. Figure 2. Fresh out of the oven. Figure 3. Intense, chewy, studded with nuts and chocolate chunks, fragrant with cinnamon and coffee. Tribute to Katherine Hepburn Brownies (adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours ) Ingredients: 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon ground cin...

I want to make more brownies...they're that good.

Tuesday was our last class of the 4-week Ethics course I was taking, which turned out better than I thought it would be. I baked for the once-weekly class, at first because we didn't get dinner (budget downsizing), but later we got some pizza, so it was just for fun after that... The first week, I went back to my beloved Cooks Illustrated choco chip cookies, and I also threw in some Mayan Chocolate Cookies from Robin Hood (a flour company) that I had frozen dough from awhile ago. The second week, I made the Samoa copycat cookies from Oatmeal Cookie Guy, which got rave reviews from my classmates and some requested it again for the next week, so I obliged. And for the last week, I decided to try some new things from those famous bakeries I blathered on about in my last entry (have you watched that SNL rap about macking on Magnolia cupcakes yet? if not, you really should...). The first item was brownies from scratch! Despite years of making cookies and cakes now, this was the first t...