Coocoo for cocoa brownies

After four years of working at a tech company that provided me with three hot meals a day and unlimited snacks, I sometimes find myself at a loss when I arrive home in the evening and stare blankly at the raw contents of my refrigerator. So much food, nothing to eat.

I'm genuinely trying to cook more often (there may be an entree-focused blog post in my future), but around the middle of last quarter, I decided that an interim solution to this problem was to sign up for as many free-food events as my schedule would permit. Generally speaking, this translates into me eating a lot of pizza for lunch... But last Friday, I actually got dinner! The lasagna wasn't anything to write home about, but my heart skipped a beat when I saw brownies waiting at the end of the buffet.

Sadly, the brownies that night were completely mediocre. 

However, they did inspire me to bake up a batch of my own. Years of research (read: eating) have taught me that brownies vary in quality along three scales: density, taste, and texture. My ideal brownie is soft, but not cake-like, has an intense chocolate flavor, and contains just enough bite to vaguely resemble fudge, while still leaving baked-goods-style crumbs on your fingers. Here is a graphical representation, which should clear up any remaining confusion:

When I stumbled on the Alton Brown recipe that I eventually used, it felt like a "palm-to-forehead" moment. I've been a fan of Alton Brown for many years (in fact, my old roommate secured me an autographed DVD set of Good Eats, which remains one of my most prized possessions), but it has been a long while since I've used one of his recipes. When I saw the ratings for his cocoa brownies, I knew I'd found my match.

And as usual, Alton came through for me.

These brownies are awesome, and I didn't make a single substitution this time. Why mess with perfection? I did watch Alton's video, which provided more specific instructions for mixing in the melted butter than the written directions, so I've slightly altered the directions below. Additionally, I lined the baking pan with parchment instead of the traditional butter-flour combo -- it made removing the brownies a breeze, which is always a pain.

And as one last aside, bar cookies baked in a 8x8 inch pan have the added benefit of being able to fit PERFECTLY into a gallon size ziplock back. Who knew? I hope my classmates are ready for some brownies!

Alton Brown's Cocoa Brownies (source):

Ingredients

• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup sugar, sifted
• 1 cup brown sugar, sifted
• 8 ounces melted butter
• 11/4 cups cocoa, sifted
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup flour, sifted
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Directions

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Line an 8-inch square pan with parchment paper.

Beat the eggs at medium speed until fluffy and light yellow. Add both sugars. Sift in the rest of the dry ingredients. Slowly mix in melted butter, adding gradually so that it doesn't pool on top of the batter. Mix to combine.

Pour the batter into the parchment-lined 8-inch square pan and bake for 45 minutes. Check for doneness with the tried-and-true toothpick method: a toothpick inserted into the center of the pan should come out clean. When it's done, remove to a rack to cool. Resist the temptation to cut into it until it's mostly cool.

Chocolate chip donuts: out of the fryer, into the oven

Hey kids, it's story time!

Back in elementary school, I went to after-school daycare at the local Jewish Community Center. I'm not Jewish, so I don't know how Mom decided this would be the best place for me to spend my afternoons -- I suspect it had something to do with the Center's proximity to our house, the prevalence of Challah bread, or my last name, but I cannot say with certainty. 

I liked the JCC well enough, but one thing I found very odd was that I seemed to be the only kid from my elementary school (literally, the only one) who went there.  I felt this most acutely in kindergarten, when my school was the first stop on the JCC bus route and every day I rode an enormous school bus with just one other person: the driver. This turned out to be rather fortuitous, though, because the bus driver also worked at a donut shop and sometimes brought leftovers for us kids. As the lone rider, I always got to pick first from the vast array. (As an aside, I ended up becoming friends with my driver, to the point where he gave me a pack of crayons for Christmas and I drew him a thank you card. I wonder what happened to him...)

All of this is just a long way of saying that while I wouldn't call myself a donut fanatic, and I very rarely crave donuts, I still feel like a kid when ever I go into a donut shop and get to pick whatever kind I want. And, of course, there are times when donuts can be truly and utterly divine.

I much prefer dense donuts to regular ones -- chocolate old fashions are my donut Achilles' heels (I also like blueberry cake ones, which I know is really weird, but I think it's because I just like anything with blueberries) -- so this year for Christmas, I asked for a donut pan. 

I've always been intrigued by the idea of baking donuts instead of frying them, and I've seen recipes for baked donuts floating around over the years, so the concept has been in the back of my mind for a while. When I got back to LA, a recipe for baked donuts popped up on the King Arthur Flour company blog, so it seemed the time had come to break in the new pan.

As usual, I did not follow the recipe to a T. I didn't have nutmeg, so instead I used pumpkin pie spice -- I think it still tasted good, but I guess purists might beg to differ. Additionally, I don't usually keep milk on hand because I'm lactose intolerant; I ended up using soy milk, which is a frequent substitution for me. Finally, I only had regular sized chips, and that seemed too big for the donut proportions, so I chopped up the chips into smaller bits. I also sprinkled a little bit of chocolate in the bottom of each donut mold, which tasted good but didn't turn out to be as visually appealing as I'd pictured in my head.

Here's the final product:

Verdict: I'm going to call a spade a spade on this one -- baked is not the same as fried, but you know what? They were pretty tasty nonetheless. These ones puffed up nicely, so they LOOKED like donuts at the very least, and they were not too hard or dry, which seemed like the biggest potential pitfall in my book. The texture is not quite as dense and crumbly as a cake donut, but not quite as fluffy as a real cake. One of my classmates compared it to coffee cake, which I interpret as a positive feedback. 

And the final test: will I make these again? I think so! I'm looking forward to trying other variations though -- maybe with blueberries. ;)

Here is the recipe, adapted from King Arthur Flour Company's blog (I actually made a half-recipe for 6 donuts, but here are the proportions for a whole dozen):

Ingredients
1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) butter
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 2/3 cups AP flour
1 cup soy milk
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips, chopped into bits

Directions
1) Preheat the oven to 425°F. Lightly grease two standard donut pans.

2) In a medium-sized mixing bowl, beat together the butter, vegetable oil, and sugars until smooth.

3) Add the eggs, beating to combine.

4) Stir in the baking powder, baking soda, spices, salt, and vanilla.

5) Stir the flour into the butter mixture alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with the flour and making sure everything is thoroughly combined.

6) Sprinkle some chocolate chip bits into each donut pan, and stir the remaining chopped up chocolate chips into the batter

8) Spoon 1/2 the batter into a lightly greased doughnut pans, filling the wells to the rim for chocolate chip doughnuts.

9) Bake the doughnuts for 10 minutes. Remove them from the oven, and wait 5 to 7 minutes before turning them out of the pans onto a rack. Repeat chocolate sprinkles and baking process for second 1/2 dozen. Enjoy warm; or cool completely, and store airtight.

Chocolate-on-chocolate revisited

My love affair with chocolate goes way back, but it has evolved over the years from the snack sized Crunch bars you get at Halloween (heavily influenced by Shaq's early endorsement of said candy), to the purest, darkest artisan chocolate bars I can get my grubby little hands on. 

My current favorite is the Costa Rica 70% from Dandelion Chocolate. Its toasty at first, and then gradually becomes tangy, almost citrus-like, all with a super rich chocolate base. If you ask me, it's pretty amazing that so many flavors can be extracted from a bean! If you like chocolate, even just a little bit, I highly recommend Dandelion. Hurray for supporting local businesses!

So, along with my growing chocolate obsession, my quest for the perfect chocolate-on-chocolate continues. My last attempt at C-on-C cookies was super chocolatey, but the texture left something to be desired. This time around, I got closer to perfection.

When I first took these out of the oven, they were so soft that I thought they might break if I tried to pick them up. But after I let them cool for a bit, they became cookie-chewy, which is just to say that they break easily and melt in your mouth, but don't crumble when you try to move them. One thing I really liked about this recipe is that the batter includes melted chocolate, not just cocoa powder, which gave the dough some extra chocolate depth.

As far as distribution, this batch worked double duty -- I brought them to a potluck and also gave them to a friend for her birthday. But perhaps even more interesting, I  recently discovered that leaving chocolate chip cookie dough in the fridge for a couple of days before baking improves the cookie texture immeasurably -- it gives the flour time to soak up the liquids, so you get insanely tender, flavorful cookies. I've been wanting to try it with other cookies, so when I made these last week, I wrapped some extra dough in parchment and stuck it in the fridge. I pulled out the dough today and baked up the remaining three cookies. Verdict: AMAZING.

Here's the recipe, which I found on Lovin From the Oven:

INGREDIENTS

2 2/3 cups (16 oz) semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder (I used Hershey's dark)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, slightly softened
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cold egg
2 teaspoon vanilla

DIRECTIONS

Heat oven to 325 degrees.

Melt 2/3 cup of the chocolate chips in the microwave by heating in increments of 30 seconds and stirring in between. Set aside.

Cream together the butter and both sugars. Stir in the melted chocolate chips. Add in the egg and vanilla.

Add the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt) to the chocolate mixture until just incorporated.

Fold in the remaining 2 cups chocolate chips.

Scoop tablespoon sized dough onto baking sheets.

Bake for about 11 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

I'm mellllltttinnnggg!... Mint Melt-away cookies

My friend Ed and I have an unusual tradition where sometimes when one of us asks how the other is doing, we respond by saying "I'M MELLLLLTTTINNNNGGGG!!!", in the style of Donkey from Shrek (see: clip). Sometimes it means one of us is straight stressin', but sometimes it's just another way of saying "Good, and you?"  It makes no sense, I know, but it makes me laugh all the same.

And speaking of melting...

I got back to LA late last week, which naturally sent me into a funk about the impending end of Winter Break. I always associated minty things with pepperminty things, which in turn remind me of the holidays, so I dusted off an old recipe I came across on SquareBakery (via Pinterest) for mint meltaway cookies. 

One of the best things about this recipe is that it's ridiculously simple. The original recipe called for green food coloring, but I almost always find food coloring to be an uncomfortable proposition. With the exception of frosting, why should your food be a different color than whatever color you get when you mash all the ingredients together? I'll probably make some enemies here, but this is the same reason I don't really like red velvet cake. I mean... It's chocolate cake. Why does it need to be red? Also, have you seen how much red food coloring it takes to make it that color? Anyway, here is everything you need for these melty minty pleasures:

Amazing, right?!?...

In addition to omitting the food coloring, I also decided to pump up the mint factor by drizzling a little bit of mint glaze on top of the cookies. I didn't really follow a recipe, but roughly speaking, I took three heaping tablespoons of powdered sugar, added a dash of water (I would have used milk. but since it was my first night back in my apartment, I didn't have any on hand), and somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 of a teaspoon of peppermint extract. Use your best judgement. :)

I'm really happy with how these came out. I've always been a fan of cookies that crumble and melt at the same time -- it sort of feels like magic.

Here's the recipe, adapted slightly from Square Bakery.

Mint Meltaway Cookies

You will need:
1 C/2 sticks of unsalted organic butter
1/2 C sifted powdered sugar + 3T for glaze
2 teaspoons of vanilla
3 teaspoons of peppermint oil + 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon for glaze
2-1/4 C cake flour
1/4 teaspoon saltPreheat oven to 400 degrees

Cream butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, peppermint oil together. Stir flour and salt together and then blend into butter mixture.

Roll tablespoon sized balls of dough and press to flatten. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet (or use a Silpat!) and bake for 8-10 minutes. 

While cookies are cooling, mix three heaping tablespoons of powdered sugar with a dash of water and a dash of peppermint extract. Drizzle over cookies and enjoy!