Posts by snarkysweets:
- nonstick vegetable oil spray
- 1/2 c. unsalted butter, diced
- 3 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
- 1-1/2 c. sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 1 tsp. instant coffee or espresso powder (optional)
- 1-1/2 tsp. vanilla
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 3/4 c. flour
- powdered sugar, to sprinkle on the finished brownie hearts
- 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks or 1/2 pound), softened
- 3-4 cups confectioners (powdered) sugar, SIFTED
- 1/4 teaspoon table salt
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- up to 4 tablespoons milk or heavy cream
- Red or pink food coloring (optional)
- 3 packages unflavored gelatin
- 1 cup ice cold water, divided
- 12 ounces granulated sugar, approximately 1 1/2 cups
- 1 cup light corn syrup
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2/3 cup confectioners’ sugar
- 1/3 cup cornstarch
- Nonstick spray
- Graham crackers broken in half
- 2 packages of chocolate bark
- 1 1/2 cups peanut butter cups, divided into 1 cup and 1/2 cup piles and roughly chopped. (It’s easiest to cut these and keep them sort of whole in the cookies if you freeze them for a while before cutting them. An hour is too long. 30 minutes is good).
- 1 1/2 cups plus 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
- 6 tbsp cocoa (Annie used Dutch-process cocoa but after reading about it I chose not to. I’m sure either would be good).
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3/4 stick butter, softened
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp milk
- 1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp peanut butter
- 1 Shallot
- 1/2 lb White Mushrooms
- 1/2 cup dry Red Wine (I used Pinot Noir)
- 1 lb. Chicken Breast (I just used two chicken breasts and had a little left over)
- 2 puff pastry sheets
- Egg Wash- 1 beaten egg, teaspoonish Half & Half
- Salt, Pepper.
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup white sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- 1 egg
- 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/3 cup milk
- 1 cup fresh blueberries
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup butter, cubed
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 3/4 cup butter
- 1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons water
- 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
- 2 eggs
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 18 chocolate mint wafer candies (I used Andes Mints)
- 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
- 8 ounces fine-quality milk chocolate, chopped
- 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
- 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
Fudge Brownie Hearts with Pink Buttercream Frosting
February 8th, 2012
So, like most of the civilized world, I’ve been checking out Pinterest lately. I especially love checking out the Pinterest links back to this site because I love seeing what recipes you guys like, don’t like, and couldn’t care less about. The comments are also generally highly entertaining.
One comment in particular really struck me recently, so I’m going to honor that Pinterester today, whoever she is. She posted one of the pictures on this site, I think of the s’mores. The caption was what got me, though. To paraphrase, she instructed her followers to skip all the text and go straight to the recipe.
Now, I’m not going to pretend I’m Jane Austen here. In fact, I’m not even up there with Kim Kardashian’s “blog.” However, I enjoy talking to all of you anonymous internet people about whatever ridiculous thing I’m obsessing over this week, and I especially love to hear what you say back. So, I’m probably going to keep rambling on about my life in between recipes.
However, just this once, just for the Pinterest lady, I won’t go on for 4 more paragraphs about how OBSESSED I am with Downton Abbey, how freaking awesome this prank is, how hilarious the show that led me to this prank is (after much Wikipedia-ing), or even how messed up I think it is that people go to funerals for the drinks. I’ll just stop here 
Enjoy!
Recipe
Idea and Brownie recipe adapted from the lovely A Farmgirl’s Dabbles
Brownies:
1. Line a 9/13 pan completely with aluminum foil. Spray pan with non-stick cook spray.
2. Preheat oven to 325°
3. Combine the butter and chocolate in a heavy saucepan (at least medium-sized or larger) over low heat. When completely melted, remove from the heat and whisk in the sugar and eggs, adding the eggs one at a time. Whisk in instant coffee, vanilla, and salt. Add the flour to the mixture and blend well. Pour into the lined pan.
4. Bake for approximately 20 minutes. They should look dry and not jiggle when you shake the pan, but a tester should still come out with some batter on it.
5. Cool completely.
Frosting from Savory Sweet Life:
1. Beat butter in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment on medium for 2-3 minutes. Turn mixer on lowest speed and add 3 cups of powdered sugar. Increase mixer speed to medium, adding vanilla extract, salt, and 2 tablespoons of milk/cream. After beating for about 3 minutes if your frosting needs a more stiff consistency, add sugar. If it needs to be thinned out, add remaining milk 1 tablespoons at a time. Finally, add food coloring (as much as desired) and beat until color is throughly incorporated.
To make the hearts:
You could obviously do this with any shape cookie cutter, but I used hearts for Valentine’s. Remove the brownies from the pan by lifting up the foil. Then you just cut out as many shapes as you want. I had about 15 sandwiches using a cooke cutter that was about 1 inch with a lot of excess brownie left over, but you can make these any size. Then just pipe the frosting onto one of the hearts. I found it easiest to outline the outside and then fill in the middle. Mine got a little sloppy, but you can certainly make these picture perfect for a party. Then just stick the other brownie half on the top, sprinkle powdered sugar over the top brownie and you’re done!
Chocolate Covered S’mores
January 8th, 2012
The more time that passes, the more I wonder if I should tell my friends and/or family about this little project. I told someone on a whim once but I don’t keep in touch with them, so it doesn’t really count in the ways that matter: being able to ask if one of my posts sounds obnoxious, asking them about my pictures, what they think I should make, etc. For those reasons, I’m always tempted to confess to more people, especially because it would save me from having to write down recipes for them. However, between posts like this and some of my earlier, uglier pictures, I can’t quite bite the bullet and fess up. I doubt the post would surprise them since, as I said, I basically spent the last year hanging around in a situation that was making me into a miserable/totally different person and it was obvious (PSA: do not do this, in or out of relationships! you will hate yourself later for letting it happen!), but I still think posts like that are best kept between me and…well, the entire internet. Unlike an acquaintance of mine who recently blogged a desperate plea for her boyfriend to propose to her and posted a link on her facebook. Sick.
So, this remains our little secret, world of the internet. Despite that, I’m generally pretty careful not to post anything I wouldn’t be okay with someone I know in real life seeing, and I don’t try TOO hard to hide anything. I even have a picture of myself on my pinterest page. Anyone reading this who knew me would be able to identify me immediately. I figure it’s only a matter of time before one of my friends is stalking tastespotting and pinterest and puts two and two together. If this is happening right now, hello! Tell me who you are!
Anyway, I say all these things for two reasons.
1. Any thoughts on how to reveal my secret internet life? I feel like at this point almost everyone under the age of 40 has a secret internet life of some sort, whether they frequent golf forums or argue over knitting methods with other anonymous knitters or do the whole online dating thing. Eventually some people must confess this sort of thing. I need help going about that. Surely a food blog is easier to reveal than a Second Life addiction.
2. I love how close-knit the food blog community is, even though it’s all internet stuff, and I love that people have made real life friends reading or writing these blogs. It always makes me feel weird for not using my name on my site. I promise it’s not because I’m being distant and weird or secretive, it’s mostly because my name is really rare (first name anyway) and if it started showing up in search engines I’d be caught in like 4 days because my friends are major creepers.
So! Moving on! These s’mores are another result of my recent trip to Disney World. The food at Disney is really quite good, even the fast food. I mean, you pay a fortune for just a cheeseburger or whatever, but in my experience it’s always pretty high-quality. I mean, don’t go straight from Eleven Madison Park to Tony’s Town Square Restaurant, but barring that, I think it’s generally tasty. The Main Street Confectionery is freaking fantastic, for instance. I feel like most theme parks have a bunch of nasty pre-packaged food made three weeks ago across the country, but this place seems to make it all pretty fresh. I went there for the chocolate covered fudge cookie but came out with this s’more.
I was initially frustrated at being unable to find the recipe online, because the marshmallow seemed so distinctive and the technique was intimidating. How do I smoothly cover a marshmallow and chocolate covered graham cracker in more chocolate without them falling apart? How do I get this weird, not quite marshmallow, not quite marshmallow fluff taste? Stressful. However, I eventually realized I needed to make my own marshmallows (which was quite trendy when I first started blogging but has since faded a bit). I still never got the chocolate covering down perfectly, but if you’ve seen my other pictures, you know I’m hardly a decorator. In any case, they tasted perfect. Exactly like the ones in the shop. Please try them! Like most things I make, they make you look awesome while simultaneously involving less effort than you would think. If you’re feeling even less ambitious, I ran out of chocolate at the end and just drizzled it as seen below and I still think they were pretty cute.
Recipe
Total Time Needed: 4+ hours
You could probably use the flat marshmallows (I know they sell them at Target, for example) but I really think the homemade ones add a lot and they really weren’t bad to make.
Marshmallows adapted from Alton Brown
1. Combine 1/2 cup water and gelatin in bowl of electric mixer with whisk attachment.
2. Combine sugar, corn syrup, salt, and remaining 1/2 cup of water in small saucepan. Cover and heat over medium heat for approximately 5 minutes (you could probably leave it covered a while longer but because everyone’s stove is different I like to err on the side of caution). Clip a candy thermometer to the saucepan and continue to heat until temperature reaches 240 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. Upon reaching appropriate temperature, immediately remove from heat. Turn mixer with whisk attachment on low and slowly pour in sugar mixture. When all sugar mixture is added, turn mixer to high and whip for 10-15 minutes, until lukewarm and fluffy. It won’t look fluffy in the way that whisked cream will, but more like marshmallow fluff. In the last minute or so, add the vanilla extract.
4. While the mixture is in the mixer, combine the cornstarch and confectioner’s sugar in a small bowl. Spray a metal pan lightly with nonstick spray (using too much will make the bottom of your marshmallows gross). For these I highly recommend using a 13 x 18 or 11 x 17 jelly roll pan. You can use a 9 x 13 but your marshmallows will be pretty tall. Dump about half of the sugar and cornstarch mixture into the pan and then spread it around to lightly coat the bottom and sides. Remove any loose excess powder.
5. When marshmallow mixture is fluffy, oil a spatula lightly and use it to pour the marshmallows into the prepared jelly roll pan. Use the spatula to spread mixture as flat as possible. Sprinkle enough of remaining cornstarch/sugar mixture to coat the top of the marshmallows lightly.
6. Let sit for at least four hours or overnight. Turn onto cutting board and cut using pizza cutter coated with confectioner’s sugar/cornstarch mixture.
S’mores Inspired by Main Street Confectionery
1. Melt chocolate bark according to package directions. I prefer melting mine on the stove over low heat because it’s easier to coat the graham crackers in the saucepan.
2. Coat graham crackers (as many as desired) with chocolate bark, set on parchment paper to dry. I was able to make about 12 s’mores (1 graham cracker half each) before I started running low on the second batch of chocolate bark. You could certainly retain some of the 1st package of chocolate and make more completely covered s’mores. I chose to drizzle my remaining chocolate instead. Or you could just buy more bark
3. When marshmallows have finished setting, turn them out onto a cutting board and cut them with a pizza cutter coated with confectioner’s sugar/cornstarch. I could try to describe to you the best marshmallow size for this, but it really comes down to trial and error. Personally, I tried to cut most of mine a tiny bit larger on all sides than the graham cracker. Place marshmallow on top of graham cracker.
4. Melt the second batch of chocolate bark. Here’s where it gets tricky. You COULD try to “glue” the marshmallow to the graham cracker by putting some melted chocolate between the two and letting it set, making it easier just to dunk the entire s’more. However, I worried about how much chocolate that would use, had visions of my s’mores separating and getting swept away in a sea of melted chocolate, etc. For me the best (best being relative) method was to hold the graham cracker portion in one hand and to spoon a big glob of melted chocolate onto the top with the other. It generally dripped down to cover the rest of the marshmallow and seal the edges with maybe a few spots I had to fill in. The downside was that the chocolate near the bottom of the pan was extremely hot and I frequently got into a situation where I was debating whether it was worth sacrificing my fingers to save a beautiful s’more. Let me know if you have a better method. I’m open to basically anything that doesn’t result in third degree burns.
Enjoy!
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cookies
January 3rd, 2012
I actually think being embarrassed when you’re alone is worse than being embarrassed in a large group of people. For example, when I’m in a large group of people and I trip on something in the street and fall down, I’m doing that weird, frantic laughing thing people do when they’re pretending not to be embarrassed and saying something like “haha guys, it IS funny that I fell down and flashed a bunch of random strangers in the process, I’m laughing WITH you at me!” When I’m alone and remember some embarrassing thing I’ve done recently (or five years ago), there’s no nonchalant show to put on. It’s just me remembering the time I got sick in public or whatever. Or, as was the case yesterday, it’s just me watching Big Bang Theory and realizing I’ve been saying “assuage” wrong my entire life. All I can do is sit there and think about how awkward people must’ve felt hearing me saying it wrong and not feeling comfortable telling me. Part of me is saying, “it’s more of a book word, you’ve probably only said it in your head while reading!” The reality is that I probably said it to someone really important and educated, or in a job interview or something. So I just sit there with my face burning in the privacy of my own home.
While perhaps not quite as embarrassing, I did remember how much of a complete moron I can be when I made these cookies. I was super excited about them. I got the original recipe off of Annie’s Eats, which probably made this more of a burn. As I’ve mentioned before, Annie has always struck me as being insanely competent. Just from her blog I can see that she’s a doctor, has kids, a beautiful and frequently updated blog, etc. I should just quit my life while I’m not ahead.
Anyway, so I was really pumped to make these cookies because they looked so attractive, didn’t take long at all, combined two of my favorite ingredients, and would allow me to chop up something, which always makes me feel way more legit than I actually am.
Unfortunately, not only is chopping up frozen candy way harder than you would think (picture candy flying off the cutting board as I try not to take off the end of my finger. Yeah. I’m pretty good at life), when you inexplicably use baking powder instead of baking soda your cookies look pretty freaking weird. They stayed almost exactly in the rounded shape they started out their time in the oven in.
I made some squashed down versions of these baking powder disaster cookies so that you guys could at least get an idea of what they were supposed to look like, but seriously you should go look at Annie’s if you’re unconvinced by these. Also even with baking powder, they were of course delicious. If you can move past your totally understandable condemnation of my baking failure, you should make these. With baking soda.
PS: For those of you reading along throughout my blog, I’m still compulsively checking law school websites and despite my hours of failed searching my friend found an I, Claudius ebook for me, for free, with 2 minutes of me mentioning my issue to him. In other words, Me: 0, Life: 2 (3 including the baking powder).
Recipe
Very slightly adapted from Annie’s Eats.
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.
2. Whisk together flour, cocoa, salt, and baking soda.
3. In empty electric mixing bowl, mix butter, sugar, and peanut butter on high speed until fluffy. Add egg, milk, and vanilla, mix for about 15-20 seconds.
4. Slowly mix in dry ingredients. With a spoon or spatula, gently fold in the 1 cup pile of peanut butter cups.
5. Spoon about 3 tablespoons worth (I used an ice cream scoop, but remember that mine didn’t spread as much as a normal cookie would) of dough into rounded balls on to lined baking sheets. Top each ball with several pieces of peanut butter cups from the remaining 1/2 cup.
6. Cook for 12-14 minutes. They look underdone when you take them out, but after a few minutes of cooling they’ll be normal. Cool for 10 minutes on pan, then transfer to wire rack.
Enjoy!
Mini Chicken Wellingtons
January 1st, 2012
I am seriously so glad the holidays are over. Annoying websites like MSN.com always post depressing stories on the home page about people who are consistently unhappy during the holidays, and I am one of those people. I love Christmas, and I love the idea of holidays, but the reality I always find them depressing and stressful for some reason. I think it’s because of the holiday emphasis on nostalgia. My nostalgia mechanism serves pretty consistently as a negative propaganda machine, displaying for me a never-ending slide show of positive memories about people I don’t like, that treated me badly, that I haven’t seen in years and usually don’t miss, etc. alongside negative, unhappy memories of the generally nice people who are in my life that I choose to keep in touch with. It’s a vicious system at any time, but the holidays are the worst. I love the routine of the every day, because there’s no time for my backwards mind to play tricks on me.
I digress. Despite this general anxiety over the holidays, I generally do have a lovely Christmas. My family has been spending it at Disney World since I was a child. At this point I feel more at home in the Grand Floridian than I do at my grandmother’s, where normal people spend their Christmases (though she is a very nice grandmother! well, one of them is…). I tried to take a picture to capture the gorgeous Victorian Christmas decorations, the life-size gingerbread house selling baked goods, etc., but the weird angles and constant swarms of people made this pretty much impossible. Here’s a random selection of Disney pictures anyway:
So anyway, at our hotel the concierge provides a bunch of food and drinks throughout the day. Usually we eat out every evening, but one night our reservation was for this Italian restaurant that I didn’t feel hungry enough for. Instead, I spent the evening at the concierge downing multiple glasses of wine and like 16 of these Mini Chicken Wellingtons, and at least 8 Italian Stuffed Bread pinwheels (coming soon!). It was a pretty classy evening…
That aside, these things are surprisingly delicious and super easy. However, they have the added bonus of looking like you put a lot of effort into them, as is the case with almost any puff pastry creation.
Happy New Years! If you’ve made it this far, you should tell me all about your holidays in the comments, or post links to whatever yummy things you had during the Christmas/Hanukkah/New Years season. I generally hate the word “yummy,” but I think it works here.
Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Defrost puff pastry sheets
3. Finely chop shallot, mushrooms. Combine with wine in large skillet or saucepan over medium heat. Cook until mixture is mostly dry, with no visible liquid. Cool.
4. Cut puff pastry sheets into rounds using 3″ biscuit cutter
5. Cut chicken into 1″ cubes (the original had several smaller pieces per Wellington but I was nervous about them getting dry. Someone should try this and let me know!). Season with salt, pepper.
6a. For Mushroom Lovers Who Want a Large Burst of Mushroom: Spoon approximately 1 tsp mushroom mixture onto each round. Top with chicken cube. Pinch edges of puff pastry together and seal with egg wash.
6b. For People Who Wish They Liked Mushrooms More But are Still Kind Of Unconvinced (me): Roll each piece of chicken in mushroom mixture until it’s covered (just a little more well-distributed across the chicken than in 6a). Place on puff pastry round. Pinch edges of puff pastry together and seal with egg wash.
7. Place Wellingtons on baking sheet, brush tops with egg wash, and bake for approximately 30 minutes on 375. Mine were generally done when the tops were nicely browned, but I would strongly recommend doing a test run and cooking one by itself, just because it’s difficult to assess whether or not your oven is cooking them without tearing them open and it would suck to have to tear open a whole batch and then serve them to people all mutilated 
Enjoy!
Five Minute Tagalongs
December 20th, 2011
Several Things I Feel Like Telling You All Because It’s Been FOREVER:
1. Thank you all SO much for your lovely comments on my last post! You guys are so sweet, especially compared to most of the anonymous internet world.
2. I’m getting reaaaaalllllllyyyyy excited about law school (my post-graduate plan). That’s not even sarcasm. I’m not so much excited about discussing torts for hours or whatever (not entirely sure what those are still…i know.), but I’m SUPER pumped to get to move away from my undergrad school to somewhere interesting. I’ve heard back from a few places about my applications, but I’m insanely anxious to begin hearing from others in the next month or two. I have a well-documented history of compulsively reading online forums regarding my area of interest, or, more commonly, anxiety. I’m not going to say that every single one of my Safari Top Sites is law school related, but…they are.
3. Khloe Kardashian is WAYYYY too obsessed with being married. I know, I know, what kind of trashy girl watches the Kardashians? I just started a couple of weeks ago, and I just find something about them oddly comforting. Anyway, for those of you too cultured to join me in this obsession, after she gets married literally ANYTIME she has to be away from her husband, NBA player Lamar Odom, she whineeessss and whinesssss. This is obnoxious. It’s especially annoying, I bet, for people whose husbands and wives are in Afghanistan or whatever, but I do realize this kind of behavior is not unheard of. The truly ridiculous thing is that she seems to think she’s the first person to ever be married. Every other sentence is “My husband…”Anytime she has to leave Lamar for like a day she pouts like a crazy person and if anyone questions her, she jumps all over them for not understanding that she’s “MARRIED now, UGH.” Really? She spends all her time trying to be seen as this mature, “married” person, but people who actually ARE mature and married can be away from each other for five seconds. For instance, I’m pretty sure Hillary Clinton still manages to conduct normal conversations with foreign heads of state without being like, “sorry, I’m just having really bad flashbacks about my husband’s affair right now, can we do this another time? My marriage comes first.”
4. Having said this, I have a closet love for Khloe and all the Kardashians, their inappropriateness, and especially their sometimes horrible life decisions. Especially Khloe really, because we’re united in our hatred for Scott Disick. And I think Kim’s marriage was real. Verbally abuse me if you’d like. Hopefully my IQ does not reflect this view.
5. I’ve just finished reading The Distant Hours and can’t stop thinking about it. It’s just very dark and twisty, but not so much that I couldn’t get through it (I’m a happy ending kind of girl). It reminds me a LOT of The Thirteenth Tale, so if you enjoyed that you should definitely read it. It’s a bit slower-paced and has a *slightly* less appalling ending, but they’re very similar. I hate when you finish a really good book and can’t find another of equal quality immediately. For some reason I’ve really been wanting to read I, Claudius. Typically, my interest in this subject was negligible when I was actually being graded on Roman history, but lately it appeals to me. Bookstores around me don’t have it, however, and it’s not on Kindle. Distressing, but perhaps a sign that I should leave it alone.
6. FINALLY, the baking! So every Christmas patients of my dad bring him mountains of baked goods. He’s a dentist, so this seems kind of strange, but no one is complaining. For the past few years someone has been bringing these cookies (if you can call them that), and I LOVE them. I could never put my finger on exactly what they reminded me of, but today in the midst of baking them I realized they taste so much like Tagalongs*, which I’m obsessed with but too intimidated by the intense do-it-yourself recipes to try to make them at home. These are the exception. I’m sure Tagalong purists will berate me for all the missing ingredients keeping it from being a *true* Tagalong, but they’re freaking delicious so I don’t care. They’re a poor man’s Tagalong, if you will. That’s better than no Tagalong at all.
*Also I just remembered that some people call these Peanut Butter Patties. Who are you? Not a fan of the word patty. In other news, I’m a snob.
Merry Christmas!
Recipe
These amounts are definitely not set in stone. The great thing is that you can make as many or as few as you want. I’ll just tell you what I did. I ended up with about 20 cookies.
-1 lb decorating chocolate (like chocolate bark. You could probably use chocolate chips just as easily).
-1/2 jar peanut butter (I used Reese’s because it’s sweet. I wouldn’t recommend natural peanut butter since it’s kind of runny).
-1 1/2 sleeves Ritz Crackers
-Peanut butter chips (optional)
1. Spread about a teaspoon (or however much you want) of peanut butter on one side of a Ritz cracker. Make sandwich with other Ritz cracker (think like a Ritz cracker oreo).
2. Melt chocolate. I used the chocolate bark in the microwave tray. The microwave tray sucked, so I ended up putting in a saucepan on low heat. You want it to be smooth.
3. Dip Ritz crackers in melted chocolate, fully coating them. I just dropped them in, rolled them around and spooned them out.
4. Decorate with peanut butter chips if desired. Let cool to room temperature
5. Enjoy!
Broken Heart Brownies
June 28th, 2011
Argh, this post. It’s the bane of my blog existence. I’ve edited it a few times out of frustration since I originally posted it. I linked it in one of my more recent posts, and since then I’ve been unable to rid myself of the urge to delete the thing entirely, because I hate looking back at how unhappy and second-rate this entire situation made me feel, and how much the feeling that no matter how hard I tried, I could never be nice, smart, pretty, or funny enough to deserve better came out in my writing.
For these reasons, I am frequently tempted to rename these something like “Happiest Brownies EVERRRRRRRRR” and write a post about my spring break plans or my inability to get into those Game of Thrones books even though everyone else loves them (seriously though, how do people keep up with who all of the characters are when their names are all RIDICULOUS?). However, that seems unfair, both to the sad, misguided version of myself from a few months ago, and to the occasional lonely person who comes across these brownies looking for culinary comfort. So, while I’m deleting the original post, I’m leaving the name the same. Everyone feels lonely and perhaps a bit heartbroken sometimes, even if it’s just for a few moments. As I said in the original post, these are the best brownies I’ve ever eaten, and when you’re feeling like there’s nothing you can do to be happy, and that no one has ever felt as bad as you do, you deserve these borderline magical brownies. While you eat them, you should remember that everyone has felt that bad at some point, no matter how happy they seem on their facebook statuses or in magazine interviews or whatever. It would be a disservice of me not to leave these here to prove it.
Recipe
adapted from my grandmother’s friend, Marie, who can’t remember where it came from.
Brownies
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup melted butter
1 tsp vanilla
Frosting
1 16 oz box powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
5 (ish) tablespoons cocoa
1/2 cup cream cheese softened(optional. I only use this if I’m serving them that day only.)
Freshly brewed coffee (a cup or less, generally)
1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Beat eggs. Add in sugar, butter, and vanilla, mix on medium speed. Add in flour slowly, beating on low speed until combined.
3. Pour into ungreased 9×13 pan, bake for approximately 25-30 minutes. Be very careful not to overbake or brownies will crumble. Take out earlier rather than later.
4. For frosting, combine powdered sugar, vanilla, cocoa, and cream cheese. Add more cocoa until mixture is uniformly brown, although it will be a muted brown color. You just don’t want any areas that are solely powdered sugar. Slowly add coffee, adding just enough to bring it to spreading consistency. It’s better to keep it thicker rather than letting it get too thin to set.
5. Frost cooled brownies.
Cinnamon Sugar Blueberry Muffins
June 23rd, 2011
So first of all…it’s been a while. A really, really long while. Giant fail. I swore to myself I wouldn’t fall behind on this during the summer, and here I am.
However, I’m in D.C. for the summer! It’s great! It’s insanely hot every single day. I feel like I’m melting. This is from someone from Texas. It’s hot.
So D.C. is good. I’m just working here for the summer, which means spending a lot of time with other college kids who are way too impressed with themselves for people who are voluntarily working at unpaid, basically unskilled jobs.
Being unskilled as I am, I have a pretty basic offering for you today: Blueberry Muffins. I feel like everyone has their favorite blueberry muffin recipe. However, I think you should use this one instead because it’s amazing, because cinnamon/sugar on anything is amazing, and because you somehow ended up on this blog even though all it had to offer was basic Blueberry Muffins. It’s fate.
Also, you should tell definitely tell me anything amazing you’ve had to eat in or around D.C. It’s super trendy to get cupcakes at Georgetown Cupcakes, but thanks to the recommendation of Brown Eyed Baker, I tried Baked and Wired instead and thought it was vastly superior. DEFINITELY try it if you visit. But first eat these muffins. For basic muffins, they’re pretty legit.
Enjoy!
Recipe
Adapted from All Recipes
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Line muffin tins or spray with non-stick spray
2. Combine 1 1/2 cups flour, 3/4 cup sugar, salt and baking powder into medium sized bowl. Add 1/3 cup vegetable oil to measuring cup along with egg. Continue to fill measuring cup to one cup line. Mix with dry ingredients, gently fold in blueberries.
3. Pour into muffin tins and then top with crumb topping. (1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/3 cup flour, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1/4 cup butter cubed and cut into mixture). Make sure not to add too much or you’ll have flat muffins. As you can see, I sacrificed puffy muffins for more topping…
4. Bake for 20-25 minutes.
Chocolate Mint Cookies
May 30th, 2011
First of all, am I the only person on earth who doesn’t care AT ALL about Jersey Shore? I’m not one of those obnoxious people (I hope!) that feel the need to explain how they’re too intellectual for Jersey Shore, or MTV in general. I’ve read more than a few questionable romance novels…but I just don’t like it. I get so stressed out even thinking about watching them do ridiculous things and almost get arrested and get arrested and leave messes everywhere they go. By the time I’ve finished reading the 5,000 Perez Hilton (Told you I wasn’t an intellectual…) articles about them I feel like I need anxiety meds.
Anyway.
As I’ve mentioned before, I tend to bake things that I know those around me will eat so that I don’t eat them all myself. This is a pretty universal trait, I think, but I live alone, so it’s especially critical. I frequently do things like eat entire trays of these by myself. In one sitting. This isn’t a humorously intended hyperbole. Seriously, all in one sitting. The stomach aches: omg.
Anyway, so I’ve also mentioned my neighbor David before as a frequent recipient of baked goods of varying quality (generally ranging from horrifying to mostly edible). We’re actually no longer neighbors, but when we were, I spent a lot of time looking for mint themed recipes because he’s obsessed. These cookies are one of those finds, and I can tell you that even as someone who doesn’t try to stealthy grab handfuls of mints while leaving restaurant, they’re pretty fantastic, and super easy.
I also really love these cookies because the cookies themselves are good. So many cookies with “toppings” sacrifice taste in order to be the right texture, color, taste combination, etc. for the topping. These cookies are really great in and of themselves, and taste really great warm. (If you add the mints, however, I’d recommend serving them at room temperature, or, better, refrigerated. Warm Andes Mints are kind of sketch.
Because I like the cookie so much I left the Andes mint towards the center to get a little of everything, but you could pretty easily cover the whole cookie with this “frosting,” especially if you use an entire mint on each cookie.
Enjoy!
Recipe
from AllRecipes
1. Melt butter, sugar, and water together in a pan over low heat.
2. Stir in chocolate chips. Stir until partially melted, then remove to heat and stir until completely melted.
3. Beat in eggs one at a time.
4. Stir in dry ingredients and chill dough for about an hour.
5. Preheat oven to 350 Degrees F
6. Roll dough into balls (approx. 36) and place two inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes, unwrapping mints while cookies bake.
7. Remove cookies from oven, place half a mint on each cookie. I found it easiest to place the mints on all the cookies and then start over at the beginning to spread the then-melted mint with a toothpick (the toothpick works, believe it or not)
Peanut Butter Cup Brownies
May 23rd, 2011
Okay, seriously, there is so much spam in my life right now. I just marked like 37 comments on this page as spam. I have people saying everything from “I need new sweaters!” to giving me instructions on how to build a cat house. Seriously.
This wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but somehow in the confusing internet whirlwind that was the setup of this blog all my comments were set up to forward to my phone as emails. I love this when these comments are from real people. When it’s 3 a.m. and I manage to drag my eyes open to see why my phone just vibrated fourteen times in a row, I’m not exactly pleased to see that it’s from 12ne2842@sketchyemailcompany.com explaining to me that ”I need a new printer immediately because my printer is not a printer” or whatever other nonsense phrase some guy in his basement has come up with.
All right. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. On to Peanut Butter Cup Brownies.
If you’ve been around here before, you might’ve noticed my fondness for brownies and peanut butter. I’m obsessed. And so, it’s probably no surprise that the other day in church I realized that I just HAD to eat brownies with peanut butter cups in the middle, similar to this recipe, which you should not judge by its pictures because it’s freaking fantastic and not mine, so I’m not even bragging.
Anyway, so as much as I love the Mint Brownies, the brownie recipe just seemed too dark to go with milk chocolate Reese’s cups, and I don’t really like the dark chocolate kind. I’ve always been curious about milk chocolate brownies. All the people that don’t eat sugar by the spoonful (no…really) are always talking about how they’re too sweet. I can’t think of anything on earth I’ve really ever considered too sweet, so I went for it.
And they were really good! I left some of the extra chocolate out when I first made them and I’ve put it back in for this recipe because I honestly wanted the brownies to be sweeter. I might even up the sugar. otherwise, they were amazing. SUPER thick and a nice complement to the Reese’s, which are already so great on their own you know they’re going to be good in brownies.
If you don’t like the milk chocolate brownie thing or just don’t want to go to the trouble, although I was initially hesitant, I would have no qualms now about recommending normal brownies for this as long as they’re not the super dark kind. I would also avoid really cakey recipes too, as they might fall apart. I made two batches of the milk chocolate brownies for a 9 X 9 pan, but you could probably get buy with one batch if you were okay with thinner brownies, or if you wanted to turn these into brownie bites in a muffin tin. Yum. That’s probably happening tomorrow.
Enjoy!
Recipe
I used 18 snack size Reese’s cups for this, across the first half of the brownie batter pan like you can see with the peppermint patties in the Mint Chocolate Brownies pictures. However, for the Reese’s cup I used two layers, slightly offset to get a piece of peanut butter cup in as many bites as possible.
As I said before, I also doubled the brownie recipe I used, which I’ll list below. You could get buy with one batch if you were okay with thinner brownies. Any brownie recipe should do, although as I said, I don’t recommend really dark brownie recipes or very cake-like brownies. But let’s face it. These are brownies with peanut butter cups inside them. You can’t really mess up.
Milk Chocolate Brownies
from Gourmet via Epicurious
DOUBLE IF MAKING PEANUT BUTTER CUP BROWNIES
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cover 9 x 9 or 8 x 8 pan with cooking spray or parchment paper.
3. Melt butter and half of the chocolate over low heat until both are completely melted. (Personally, I would actually recommend melting all 8 ounces in one go to give a sweeter taste throughout, especially if you’re making the peanut butter brownies).
4. Remove from heat and cool for approximately five minutes. Stir in brown sugar and vanilla, then beat in eggs one by one until smooth.
5. Combine dry ingredients in separate bowl, whisk, then stir into chocolate mixture. If only half of chocolate was added in Step 3, stir in remaining chocolate.
6. For Peanut Butter Cup Brownies, pour half of batter into pan and top with eighteen Reese’s cups as discussed above.
7. Pour second half into pan, completely covering Reese’s cups, and bake for approximately an hour for peanut butter cup brownies, or 25-30 minutes for regular brownies. This will vary greatly based on how thick your brownies are. Once the top of the brownies no longer jiggles when the rack is moved, remove brownies. Brownies will be lightly fudgy in middle when finished.
Pepperoni Pizza Bites
May 16th, 2011
If you are at all familiar with the food blog world, you’ve probably discovered Annie’s Eats. I don’t know Annie, but I’ve always felt pretty inadequate just looking at her site, because it’s gorgeous. THEN I read her About Me page, where I discovered that she maintains her amazing site while ALSO being a doctor AND having two kids. I’m a total failure at life.
Anyway, so if you’ve seen her blog, you might have seen these pizza bites. She might call them something else, but it’s the same thing. So, nothing new here! But I make them so often I figured I might as well share them for the few people that haven’t come across them that totally need to.
The awesome thing about these is that you can put almost anything in them that you want. Different kinds of pepperoni style meat, sausage, different cheeses, only cheese, etc. All of these work well here. I usually use homemade pizza dough, but store-bought works just as well! I barely even feel like I’m cheating by doing that. Just don’t buy thin crust pizza dough.
Anyway, they’re amazing. They taste exactly like the pizza rolls this pizza place makes at school, except since they’re so tiny that I can tell myself that they’re healthier since they aren’t 300 calories per roll (OMG).
For a party you could definitely make two batches and bake them all in one 9 x 13 to feed more people. Plus look how much effort it looks like you put into them. They’re so cute!
Enjoy!
Recipe
from Annie’s Eats
Enough pizza dough for one pizza (if you’re going the pie plate route)
4 oz mozzarella, diced. (or cheese of your preference. Honestly, string cheese works surprisingly well here).
Sliced pepperoni or other meat
Italian seasoning
Grated romano or parmesan cheese
Olive oil
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Separate dough into 20-24 roughly equal pieces.
3. If using homemade dough, you can usually just grab a piece, stretch it out, and wrap it around whatever you’re putting inside. Store bought dough you’ll often have to roll out piece by piece. Either way, You want to roll it into a square that I would say is about one inch on either side, but who knows.
4. Cover square with meats, cheeses, etc. and grab corners together to pinch and join at the top. Usually the edges will stick together well but if not just do the best you can and immediately put it pinched side down on a pie plate sprayed with cooking spray.
5. Continue for all pieces of dough. Cover tops of bites lightly with olive oil (I used my silicone brush) and then lightly sprinkle with grated cheese and italian seasoning.
6. Bake in pre-heated oven for approximately 20 minutes or until the tops are lightly golden brown.
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