The Best Brownies

Alright, so I (Emily) know that I've been doing the bulk of the posting lately, and that the vast majority of said posts have involved baked goods of some sort or another. Allow me to take this moment to explain.

On July 1st, I am leaving the Twin Cities to spend two weeks with my family in Georgia.

On July 14th, I am leaving Georgia to spend two years with a bunch of strangers in China. (I'm one of 30 international teaching fellows who will join up with 30 Chinese teaching fellows to form the China Education Initiative's 2010-12 cohort. Eek!)

China doesn't really do the whole baking thing, and when I studied abroad in Beijing my junior year I remember my friend's Chinese roommate was unable to handle the sweetness of dark chocolate. In other words, in a little over a month I'm going to have to begin finding some way to compensate for my lack of baking delicious things on a regular basis. For the time being, I'm baking up a storm.

These particular brownies came about because I found a ghirardelli 100% cacao bar for $2.50 and couldn't resist, so I decided to make something extra special and went on a quest for "The Best Brownies." Of course, after half an hour's pouring over both cookbook and internet recipes, I didn't find anything that struck me as the ultimate chocolate treat. So instead of being reasonable and picking out one of what were probably several close seconds, I decided to have a baking adventure and make it up as I went along. It's quite simple and amazing. Also, I was so excited I forgot to take pictures, but it looks like a brownie when it's done. Trust me.

Chewy Chocolate Fudgy INCREDIBLE Brownies
Ingredients

• 4 oz unsweetened chocolate (1 ghirardelli baking bar)
• 4 tsp. cocoa powder
• 2 sticks butter (1 cup), softened
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 4 eggs, at room temperature
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 3/4 cup flour
• 2 TBS cocoa powder
• 2/3-3/4 cup chocolate chips
• a pinch or so of salt
  

Procedure

• Melt the chocolate and 4 tsp. cocoa powder together. I used the double boiler method. Let it cool for at least 8-10 minutes.
• Preheat the oven to 350°F
  
• Cream the butter and sugars together until well blended. You shouldn't see any "spots" of butter. Depending on how soft the butter is, this'll take anywhere from 1-5 minutes
• Stir in the eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla extract.
• Gently whisk or stir in the melted chocolate.
• Stir in the baking powder and flour, then add the 2 TBS cocoa powder. Everything should be smooth and a rich brown.
  
• Fold in the chocolate chips.
• Pour the batter into a well-greased 9"x13" pan. It should be thick. You will need a spatula to get out the last of it. Spread the batter evenly, and sprinkle a little bit of salt over the top.
• Bake for 25 minutes, checking after about 20. When a toothpick comes out with a few crumbs sticking to it, they're done.
  
• Let the brownies cool in the pan, placed atop a baking rack.
  

In terms of cooling times, you can eat them as soon as 10 minutes after they come out of the oven, but I'd say wait at least half an hour. These brownies honestly didn't hit their peak until day 3--when they tasted almost as though they were spiked with some kind of liqueur, they were so flavorful and chocolaty. Truly amazing.

Oh, and you'll need some milk. Or water. Or ice cream. Or something!

Pumpkin Chocolate Biscotti!

So I don't think it's been mentioned before that both the Ia(i)ns and I are in a mostly-sacred, often-early music vocal ensemble (if we only had an alto we'd have a complete SATB set for our house). We were in choir at Macalester together and had a difficult time thinking of going from 4-5 days a week of singing to none. Plus early music is absolutely gorgeous and ridiculously fun to sing. Last Sunday The Gregorian Singers had an Advent Procession (my first, being, y'know, Jewish), and afterwards we had a potluck party to go to.

I was scrambling for something to make since we'd all just gotten back from Thanksgiving to a mostly-devoid-of-groceries house when I suddenly remembered the 128 Cookie Recipe magazine my mom bought me for airport reading. Flipping through it, I spotted a few biscotti recipes that looked fun, but I didn't have all the ingredients for any of them. I was also in the position of having a half can of pumpkin in my fridge. While easy and tempting enough to make more pumpkin bread, I figured it'd be more interesting to try something new. Thus, a baking adventure seemed prudent. This was only my second attempt at biscotti of any sort, but I think they actually went well! And they're a very different deal than the chocolate chip pumpkin bread, regardless of the similarities in recipe form.


Ingredients

• 1/4 c. butter (half a stick- you could go up to 6 TBS)softened
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• about 1/2 cup pureed pumpkin
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. ginger
• 1/4 tsp cloves
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• dash of salt
• 3 cups flour
• about 2/3 chocolate chips or chopped dark or semi-sweet chocolate (I actually chopped the chocolate chips a bit so they'd get better incorporated).

Procedure

Now, just as a disclaimer, there are a lot of ideas of what makes a biscotti truly a biscotti. I don't really know any of them. All I know is that biscotti must be twice baked. Also, this is a baking adventure; measurements are approximate.

• Preheat the oven to 375°F.
• Combine pumpkin and butter in a large bowl and mix well. There will be some lumps. Don't worry too much about those, but don't leave huge chunks of butter.
• Add the sugar and baking powder and salt, then the eggs and vanilla, then the spices.
• Stir in the flour. A mixer would make this easier, but you can do it! It will make a stiff dough. Throw the chocolate in and incorporate it as best you can.
  
• Dump the dough onto a lightly floured surface and split it into two. Make two logs out of it like the one in the picture. They should be about 8"-12" long. Just pat the dough into place-- it should stick pretty easily, since it's so stiff.
• Stick the rolls on a baking sheet (ungreased) and pop them in the oven for about 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
• Cool for awhile and then cut the logs very carefully, in a sawing motion with a serrated knife into slices. Mine were 1/4-1/2 inch thick. If your logs are like mine, some of the pieces will crumble a bit, but that's ok.
• Place the slices on a baking sheet like the one above, reset the oven to 325°F, and bake for 10 minutes. Then flip and bake about 10 minutes more. Actually, they'd probably be fine if you didn't flip them, but I did. If they come out a little soft in the middle don't worry. They'll crisp up while cooling.

I recommend dunking in tea or cocoa.

Mmmm Scones!

Well, we're finally back. It's been a pretty busy couple of weeks. I (Emily) started my job and Iain's been going crazy trying to find a place for us to move into come September 1. But he did and we've signed a lease and it's going to be fantastic. It's got a great kitchen, anyway.

So while we have been cooking/baking quite a bit (expect a post soon with some brief descriptions of our latest adventures), we haven't found much time to blog about it.

Anyway, last weekend I thought it would be lovely to make some scones. We'd let some milk go close to sour and so I figured it would be good to buttermilkify it. We had most of a lemon sitting around too, so I decided that traditional lemon-buttermilk scones were probably the way to go. That thought was gone, however, as soon as we opened the cupboards. We were, shall we say, low on some essential ingredients. So the planned breakfast quickly morphed into a baking adventure that resulted in, incredibly enough and to my great delight...

Lemon Chai Scones

Now, before we get started I would like to stress, once again, that this was a baking adventure. I did not follow a recipe while actually cooking, although I did consult a couple of generic scone recipes. Thus, the ingredients and procedure are approximate, nothing was recorded until after the fact, and I cannot guarantee that if you follow this to the letter you'll get the same results I did. I was, however, shocked by how great these turned out! The flavors melded really well, the whole wheat flour added nice texture and depth, and as far as nutrition and scones go these are pretty decent. So I do recommend giving these a try, particularly if you enjoy chai. Ingredients

• 1 cup flour
• 1.5 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/4 - 1/3 cup white sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 - 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 TBS chai powder *note* One of my friends gave me a small bag of this 'chai powder' for my birthday. According to the website of the company it's from, the ingredients are: sugar, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, vanilla and black pepper. If you can't find any where you are, you can probably try mixing it yourself.
• cinnamon sugar to taste
• 1/2 stick (4 TBS)butter.
• 3/4 c. buttermilk
• juice and zest of half a lemon

Procedure

Pre-heat the oven to 350°F.

As with most muffins, start by stirring together the dry ingredients-- in this case the flours, sugar, baking powder, salt, chai powder, and cinnamon sugar.

Cut in the butter. If you aren't familiar with this term, it means slicing the butter into little chunks and then using two knives to cut it into smaller bits (aiming for the size of peas, more of less) and incorporating it into the dry ingredients. If you have a pastry cutter, that's easier, or you can throw it into a food processor and have it done in twenty seconds, but I really enjoy the manual work.

Pour the buttermilk, lemon juice, and zest into the dry mix. If you're so inclined you can mix the wet ingredients together first-- it would probably help. But I was lazy so I didn't. Also, a note on buttermilk. I don't think I've ever actually bought it, because you can sub in sour milk, and you can actually make milk into sour milk by adding one teaspoon of vinegar for every cup of milk you want to buttermilkify. It sounds strange, I know, but it really does work. It might not have the same delicious flavor as buttermilk, but chemically it works well (and it certainly doesn't taste bad).

Bake for 25 minutes, more or less.

Lemon-Chai Glaze

I decided to throw this on top just for fun, and also because we still had a quarter of a lemon left. And also because I was already deep into baking adventure mode and we're trying to use up ingredients before we move. Anyway....

Ingredients

• 1/4 lemon, juiced
• chai (liquid this time. I had some chai tea I'd iced in the fridge and just poured some in. Probably a couple of tablespoons. But it's all a matter of proportions with this stuff so I won't try to give exact measurements)
• Powdered sugar (same deal as chai).

Procedure
Combine the ingredients and stir/whisk thoroughly until a good pouring/spreading consistency is reached. This is where it gets super subjective, because it comes down to individual taste/texture preferences. Personally, I used probably no more than a few tablespoons of liquid and well over 2 cups of powdered sugar. Others might take that even further and use 4 cups of sugar for that amount of liquid. Others might want something thinner. So just mess around. Add liquid slowly and taste the glaze to make sure it doesn't taste like pure sugar. After the scones have cooled a little, spoon (or spread, depending on the consistency) the glaze on top. Enjoy!


So that'll do it for now. But expect a post from Iain soon regarding a particular Italian-inspired adventure. G'night, everybody!