Food & Thoughts

It's June, it's summer, it's HOT! Can't have the oven on for too long, so brownies, layered with ice cream from the lovely,  Foodbeam ? Hear hear! Only I never got so far as to do the cookie sandwiches - I just ate my cookies alongside banana ice cream from ParadIS . It was lovely! METHOD: This is a cookie, but unlike most cookies I make, there's no creaming of butter and sugar. Instead, you go the standard brownie route: melt chocolate and butter together, beat eggs and sugar, mix the two and add flour mixture. The batter ends up somewhat stiffer than a regular brownie batter, but only by a whisker. INGREDIENTS: These cookies use brown sugar - that's new, only my standard recipe has a mix of brown sugar and regular sugar. There's a - in comparison - tiny bit of sugar (30 grams), but that is more than made up for by the amount of chocolate - 200 grams. I used Valrhona Guanaja 70%. chocolate:egg:sugar ratio: Standard (January): 110:2:300 Meyer...

  For the month of May, I'd decided to try a cakey brownie. I should probably let you know - and I guess I already have - that I much prefer my brownies fudgy, rather than cakey. But you know - science. Perhaps I was missing out, not ever trying out the cakey ones? If anyone should know about chocolate (and hence, brownies) it oughta be The Scharffen Berger people. So I grabbed the cookbook I have from them, and found the aptly named: cakey brownie. They have other kinds, too, but this what was I needed. Here we go: METHOD:  The method in this cake involved doing a meringue to start - whipping egg whites with sugar, luckily nothing with thermometers and sugar syrup! I let the trusty KA do the job, and it was no problemo. The recipe did call for the meringue to be whipped until the sugar dissolved, and while it was whicking away, I started thinking whether my sugar ever dissolves?? Not just using this method, but Im pretty sure there's always a little grit to it... I al...

Unsweetened chocolate. Oh, the woe is me. Unsweetened chocolate was the key ingredient in this months brownie , coming to you from Deb, over at Smitten Kitchen . Not easy to come by around these parts, let me tell you. Back when I started this project, I asked one of my friends going to New York if he would get me some, but even in the City of Dreams, he didn't find it. Well, he didn't find the Sharffen-Berger kind I wanted. Luckily, I had some at home, from a trip I did many, many moons ago - but it was long-past-it's-best-before-date. Not one to be deterred, I used it anyways - which may be an explanation for my less than impressive results. (yes, that was a spoiler right there...) METHOD You melt chocolate and butter, then whisk in sugar, then eggs. Similar to my standard recipe, but the batter became almost fudge-caramel like - long and dense, somehow. And you could tell there was a LOT of sugar in there, with it almost crystallizing. INGREDIENTS: chocolat...

The first month of spring, and time for something new. For me, and The Year of Brownies, that meant really getting out of the comfort zone, in the form of adding something not chocolate to my brownies. Enter the walnut. I've had bad experiences with nuts. There's nothing that can ruin a cake, bread or salad like a stale nut, and for a long time, I was the type of person that bought stockpiles of nuts, only to have them go rancid at the back of the drawer. And a bad nut will most certainly mess up the taste experience, so perhaps what I've not liked about nuts in my brownies was not so much the texture, but the (off) taste. Given time, I've learned to keep my nuts in rotation, and now buy them when I need them, so they're fresh and sweet. There seems to be a trend towards me posting at the very end of the month, but I promise, these were baked on March 31st (hence the back-dating of the post). Nothing like a deadline, eh? METHOD: Slightly different from m...

February is my birthday month, so of course, we had to have brownies for my birthday. Choosing this particular recipe for this month made a lot of sense - in it's original listing, it makes 40 brownies and uses 750 grams of chocolate! No way was I going to find myself with that much cake around ALONE. I scaled the numbers back to 8/15 (original recipe calls for 15 eggs, hence the weird conversion), and even so, we had PLENTY of cake - even some for the fridge for a couple of days later. For some reason, they state in the recipe that the cake will keep for 2-3 weeks in the fridge. Yeah, not around here. METHOD Procedure-wise, this recipe has you melt chocolate and butter and add that to whisked together eggs and sugar. This is slightly different from my standard method, were the sugar is dissolved with chocolate/butter, and the eggs then added afterwards. INGREDIENTS The chocolate:egg;sugar ratio in my standard recipe is 110:2:300. The Meyer recipe h...

Like I said, I already have a brownie recipe I find pretty perfect. It has no add-ons, save for extra chocolate, when I feel like it, it comes together in no time, and I almost always have all the ingredients at the ready. Come to think of it, this recipe may have been one of the first brownies I ever made. The book that it comes from is one that I bought back when I lived with my still-boyfriend in London, back in 2000. It's called The Little Red Barn Baking Book  and is written by Adriana Rabinovich, who - I just found out - has a gluten-free-centered blog called Gluten-free Cooking for Kids . Back in the days, her company (also named The Little Red Barn) sold brownies, cookies etc. to Starbucks, Fortnum & Mason's and Selfridges to name a few, and she decided to share her recipes in this here book. aIt was a little unassuming number, but the amount of recipes I wanted to make - banana bread! cinnamon buns! Devil's food cake! Snickerdoodles! -  as I paged through it...

Pistachio Petit Four Cake - for my 31st. birthday It seems like it was just yesterday M drove me to the hospital, one early morning. We thought we were just going for a scheduled check-up - but then again, some sort of something had started during the night, and I wasn't quite sure, is this contractions and am I...? Turned out, M missed his meeting. We never got the bring "the bag". Or park the car in the right place. It went fast, and out came one little wrinkly, dark-haired, big, fantastic baby boy. And that's it. All of a sudden we were parents. A Mom and a Dad. Two days later, late in the evening, M drove the three of us back again. He's never driven that slow before either. A new family. Mile-High Devil's Food Cake - for the Maternity Group Oh my, oh me. People, it's been six months. That's half of an entire year. And my - our - baby boy is growing up so fast it's all we can do to try and keep up. It's a whirlwind. It's crazy and...

A story my Mom and older sister like to tell other people from time to time is back from when I was little. It's the one about the red robin. We lived in a big house with large windows, and one day, a red robin flew, head first, into one of those glass panes. I'm pretty sure it died on impact, and it's tiny body fell to the pavement below. Mom got out the biggest shovel we had and scooped the dead bird into the outside bin, thinking not much of it. Until I asked her: 'when I die, will you put me in the bin, too?' I was a deep, deep, kid. Or a weird, weird kid, depending on how you see it. It wasn't because I was afraid to die, I think. I was just wondering what would happen. Another story is the one where I, not much older than 6 or 7, crawled up onto my Mom's lap and burst into tears. My Mom sat there for a second or two, wondering what might have happened, before she asked me what was wrong. 'I don't want to grow old. I don't wanna be an adult...

I missed yesterdays NaBloPoMo. Actually, I missed Friday, but the post I put up Saturday morning I'd started Friday, so I figured eh. Tsk tsk. But you know what? I'll make up for it with brownies and cupcakes! The brownies are crazy rich. Crazy. I guess that's what you get when you put chocolate, peanutbutter and dulce de leche in the same baking pan, but don't say I didn't warn you. They're the kind of confection that could almost substitute expensive filled chocolates. In my case, anyways, seeing I'm not big on filled chocolates - in fact, I'd rather eat brownies than filled chocolate any day. I should note that I'm definitely a lover of a fudgy brownie (as this one is - look at this ) - no cake-crumbly style for me here. Rich and decadent, these are, and cut into tiny squares, put on a pretty platter and served with coffee or tea - or a tall glass of milk, they'll be fit for royalty. Or people who dig heavy brownies, at least. The idea c...

Banana Layer Cake with fresh Bananas and Chocolate Ganache Frosting It's amazing what two weeks of summer vacation can do to you. Like me? I think I've become the Queen of Procrastination (yes, that word again) Allow me to explain myself. The last two days, I've spend playing this . I even shelled out the 20 bucks for the full version. Seriously. And I know. It's a kid's game. But I'm not only the Queen of Procrastination, I am also: "Zarah. An arcade game called "Cake Mania" addict." Chocolate Meringue Truffle Cake Yes, most people would describe me as a mature and sensible 28-year old woman. Most. Probably not Martin, as he has been the one coming home to a non-showered, still in her pajamas, bed-head haired monster with an adrenalin-level shot through the roof, eyes as big as teacups and visible palpitations. And I'm taking a wild guess that at least one of my girlfriends shook her head at me when I got a little CAPITAL-LETTERED bec...

Even more her best friend when she realizes she hasn't posted to her dear blog for, well, ages, AND her exam is just a little less than a month away. When she then on top of that realizes she's had just a bit too much fun with chocolate (and other food items) during the past four months for her to have really prepared for any of that - I guess you know how it goes, don't you? It's That Time Of Year where I try to cram, cram and cram some more and try to get ready for my exam. If I'm lucky, I'll even have some chocolatey friends to help me. Except maybe not the one in the top right corner. We weren't friends, and really, it was all his fault, 'cause he could just have come out of that Bundt pan already, yes he could! They are, from top to bottom, Classic Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Cake - Heirloom Devil's Food Layer Cake (My Birthday Cake this year) - and Milk Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake, all from Lisa Yockelson's ChocolateChocolate . (Btw., Luisa,...

I had promised myself to be a good girl this week. I'd promised myself: no baking. You can't keep doing cakes and muffins and sweet stuff for DwB, Zarah - you're going to end up having to rename the project Baking with the Bloggers! I know, I've only done one DwB-post yet this time around - but trust me, there's a scary amount of chocolatey treats finding their way into my to-do-list. I could claim I was innocent, that they simply jump in there themselves. But we all know that's a lie. And I'm no liar. So, I went looking for something savory. And you know, as well as I do, that there is PLENTY of opportunities in that respect out there also. It was a windy, cold and dreary Monday, and it was weather for soup. Yes, already that time of the year. And there it was, jumping out at me from my Bloglines. Smitten Kitchen is a relatively new foodblog written by Deb from New York. I forget how I first stumbled upon her blog - at first I thought it was from Cate ment...

This might be kind of silly - I mean why draw your attention to a blog that I'm almost a 100 % sure you already know? Because - well, because as soon as I saw what I tried for this post, I knew I had to try it. So bear with me - it might not be an unknown blog, but it's a good blog. (and there is, btw, noone telling me what I can or cannot do - so of course I can focus on a well known blog - heh!) So: we're talking a guy that's writing cookbooks. Wait, let me re-phrase that - no just any old kind of cookbook. No, this man writes books on desserts . People - how could I not love this guy? Yes, yes, it's him - it's David Lebovitz and his blog that I've put my clammy hands on this Wednesday. Ever since I first read his blog, I've been rolling around on the floor laughing - I love his sense of humour, and the man is downright F U N N Y ! Even honest , too (seriously - if you haven't read his confessions-post, you have to hurry up and do it - it's h...

I have a lot of pictures lying around from before we left Denmark - including these, of some cupcakes I served for my brothers birthday in late February. It's not so much a recipe, but more of an idea. It sprang from the fabulous White Chocolate and Dulce de Leche Cheesecake Santos' pictures and description persuaded me to make for a DwB-session a year ago - Boy, was it delish! And then, browsing around Chockylit 's blog, as I do from time to time (and watch out with that - clicking on Chockylit's pictures could have you running to the kitchen within seconds, thinking nothing but cupcakes, cupcakes, CUPCAKES!!!:-)), the idea emerged of taking the flavors from the cheesecake, and turning them into a cupcake. I haven't been able to find that many recipes using dulce de leche as an ingredient in, say, cupcakes, which has annoyed me a bit. So, using the approach Chockylit's has to a lot of her cupcakes (a base-recipe for the cake, then some sort of filling, and the...

Sometimes, my Man is amazing. Wait, allow me to correct that - he's always amazing. But sometimes he outdoes himself. Like on a cold, cold December night he'd been working and I'd been sitting in front of the heater, studying for my exam, and he came home and started making me cupcakes. Martin never bakes, I should probably mention. But with Nigella in one hand and me coaching from the little table in the kitchen - as if he wouldn't have known what to do without either!:-P - he made these wonderful little numbers, Chocolate-Cherry Cupcakes . I'm still studying for that exam. For some reason (maybe it's still the perfection thing ??) I chose to walk out from the what-was-to-be a six hour written exam after half an hour. I get a second chance in a couple of weeks (luckily!) but just know that that is one of the reasons posts might go a little short and sweet for a while around here... Well, that and I seem to have collected an enourmous amount of pictures of food ...