Last Call

This bar blog is closing. I could not keep up with my own promise to bake, eat, and write regularly. My expanding waistline shrunk those ambitions.

Thank you - sincerely, truly - for reading Brownie or Die. If you are an aspiring professional interested in networking, please check out my new blog, Biz Plop. It's a work in progress and could use your input.

Why Bars Are Better

You can count on me to furnish dessert at meetings, parties, and potlucks; I never turn down an opportunity to seduce strangers with sugar. I bring bar desserts, natch, but my allegiance to the 8 x 8-inch pan is not so rabid as to blind me to reason. I'll concede that cupcakes are trendy and pies are homey. The beauty of bars, however, is fivefold:

1. No Transportation Trouble - Bars can be conveniently stacked, even when frosted. Cupcakes require fussy care in transit if they are to remain precious by party time. Moreover, a pyramid of brownies looks much more dramatic and appealing than a pile of deflated cookies. Carry bars in clear tupperware on the Metro and you'll garner at least five phone numbers before you get off.
2. Finger-Friendly - Unlike cakes or pies, bars can be enjoyed sans silverware. For this your host will be thankful. Guests are also more likely to enjoy a dessert they can simply pick up and nibble on while mingling. When one less person in a room is gesturing with a fork, that's a good thing.
3. Portion Control - The ideal bar is 2 x 2 inches, a size that both pardons dieters from their sweet transgression and allows for a full but not overwhelming experience of the bar. Hedonists (me, me, me!) can always pick up a second or third bar. Since we're not in kindergarten anymore, don't cut bars so big that guests must share nicely.
4. Crustlessness - Almost any cookie dough can be slathered into a pan and baked in bar form. This practice produces an Elysian plane of the cookie's winningest feature: its soft, gooey interior. I do not trim the edges from my bar desserts because the thought of throwing any part of a dessert away makes me misty. I do, however, keep the corners. These I eat immediately, while standing, cutting knife in hand, barely a breath between bites.
5. Mirthful Mouthful - It is impossible to elegantly consume a cupcake without flatware (see Bar Benefit #2). They are usually a smidgen too big for the mouth but not big enough that you don't give it an awkward go. The next thing you know you're sporting a Nair-like smear of frosting on your upper lip, a thousand crumbs have pooled in your lap, and your jaw aches. There is real beauty in the simplicity of the bite-and-chew bar.

Keep these facts in mind the next time you're nominated to be the bearer of good food. Bar desserts make your life easier and everyone else's night better.

A Pastel Chip on My Shoulder

The blank canvas is a vastly exciting thing; it is frozen in meaninglessness until we mark it. Poised before a plain white sheet, we wield an extraordinary and uniquely human power of creation. Few other life forms (a) have imaginings which (b) they can transcribe into physical reality. Elephants with paintbrushes don't count.

Musicians start with silence and sculptors with a slab of marble, but from what point does the chef begin?

Because they resembled in shade and texture a pale and empty page, I chose Tartelette's White Chocolate Brownies as my alphas. I was pursuing a vision of pastel-chipped blondies, a bar whose cross-section would glitter with a rainbow of... these things:

It occurred to me as I tried to hunt down these candies that we - bakers as a genus - do not have a name for them. Until now. I am calling them "pastel chips." Forever so shall they be. Pastel chips were the only substitution I made in Tartelette's recipe.

Recall, if you will, the ignoramus of the classroom who habitually mismatched markers and their caps. He probably had a permanent Kool-Aid mustache and a rattail. Thanks to him, your sun would be blue and your mom's hair green. This little punk now makes pastel chips.

I was expecting creamy, Easter-hued bits of mint in my blondies. Instead, the pastel chips melted into flecks of primary colors. Where a chip should be, only smudgy crumbs dyed red, green, and yellow remained. The white chocolate blondies were neither white nor chocolatey. And curiously, the pastel chips' sugar beads did not dissolve. They lent an odd, almost imperceptible crunch to the bar.

Minty and buttery though they were, these bars were the result of an artistic endeavor that ended ingloriously. Clue me in on your secrets if you've baked with pastel chips in such a way that preserves their shape and color. To me, these chips are barely worthy of a name.

It's Your Thaang

Oxymorons:

Easy run.
Holy crap.
Asian dessert.

My professional role model, Jeffrey Steingarten, once compared Indian desserts to face creams. Indians aren't the only Asians whose sweets stink. Japanese mochi - gelatinous wads of rice paste filled with red beans - are retired wrist rests. Taiwanese bubble tea is not even bubbly; it's watered-down tapioca pudding. You could argue that most Asian cultures, living as they do on lands fertile with fruit, have little incentive to develop desserts. But I wouldn't listen.

The world's largest continent needs bar desserts like Africa needs foreign investment. Because I am good and because I am American, I will bestow unsolicited brownie and blondie recipes upon the populous nations of Asian. Thank me later guys.

This one's for you, Thailand: ginger-spiked blondies studded with dried papaya and pineapple and drizzled with a lime-coconut glaze. You can call the blondies Phom See Thwaangs, which may or may not mean "blonde hair color." I'm calling them Thai Thaangs. Since yours is a wet country, I've made these bars a little dry; use stale Thai Thaangs to wipe up monsoon messes! Finding ingredients for this recipe should pose no problem: ginger, pineapple, lime, and coconut all grow in Thai soil.

You know what else grows in Thai soil? Athletic shoes. Just kidding.

Sacherbrownies, Suessified

Big A, little a, what begins with A?

Austrians eating apricots
A...a...A

Big B, little b, what begins with B?

Baking a brownie base
Buttery and bittersweet

Big C, little c, what begins with C?

A caliginous coat of chocolate
C...c...C

Big D, little d, what begins with D?

Decorous dessert done differently
Documented in ditty

Sacherbrownies

Brownies:
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
4 tbs. unsalted butter
1 c. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
1/2 c. flour
Filling:
1 c. apricot preserves
Glaze:
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
4 oz. bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips
3 tbs. butter

For Brownies: Preheat oven to 350 F. Line an 8 x 8-inch pan with foil and grease. Melt 2 oz.
unsweetened chocolate and 4 tbs. butter in a medium, heavy saucepan over very low heat, stirring constantly until smooth. Set aside to cool completely. Stir in sugar and vanilla, then eggs. Add flour until just combined. Spread batter in pan and bake for roughly 23 minutes. Allow brownies to cool completely before proceeding.

For Filling: Spread apricot preserves over brownies.

For Glaze: In a double boiler, melt unsweetened chocolate, bittersweet chocolate chips, and 3 tbs. butter in a double boiler. Smooth mixture over apricot preserves. Refrigerate until set (at least 1 hour). Note: once glaze is set, it's best to let the brownies return to room temperature before serving. The glaze will not melt.

In Poor Taste

In February, for the first time in my life, I spat out chocolate. Three times.

Episode #1: While meandering through the faux marché of my local Wegmans, I spotted a bony little bakery sprite safeguarding a tray of truffles behind the counter. I don't wish to intimidate people with my height (I'm 5'11; chocolate milk did this body good) except in the procurement of free food. I sidled up to the wee salesperson and asked, in a purposefully imperative tone, if she was in the possession of samples. The petite peddler nodded wordlessly, toothpicked a truffle, and handed it to me.

Anyone, I learned, can make a Wegmans truffle at home in under five minutes. Find a dying houseplant, scoop up some potting soil with a melon baller, and roll the dirt into a ball. Dust with cocoa powder. Thank me later.

Episode #2: It surprises many to learn that an acerbic character such as myself would delight in serving the working poor. On Valentine's Day I expressed my love for mankind by serving chili and brownies - generously donated by a local café - to D.C.'s hungry homeless. Once all were served the volunteers were urged to eat the leftovers, lest any food go to waste. I peeled a Play-Doh-y slab of brownie from its pile. Extend the Play-Doh imagery to every sensual impression a baked good can affect. My sympathy for street people reached new depths.

Episode #3: I'm a pillager. I do not steal in stealth, as thieves do. I break into and enter no property, as burglars do. I take what I want - in this case, the Valentine's Day loot of friends and family - by means of friendly force (meaningless threats). So it was that I seized several mousses from the Limited Edition Godiva Mousse Collection. You tell me: what is a "tropical" filling? Putrefied pineapple? Moldered mango? Soured coconut milk? I couldn't put my finger on it, but I immediately regretted putting it on my tongue.

Until now, my love of chocolate has always overpowered my gag reflex. This sweet tooth has never been so selective. If you're a baked good pusher or user, tell me: have rampant in-house baking habits hampered your ability to appreciate lesser desserts? If so, do you consider this development a blessing or a curse?


Learn about potted plants!

Love with Milk

The casuality with which we throw around the term "comfort food" is discomfiting. Not everything warm and wintry is comforting because comfort is not simply a biological response to seasonal changes or stress. A food which comforts does so because it is familiar, and familiar in the sense that it has been introduced through - and its taste espoused by - familial connections. Chocolate Chip Cookies are universally accepted as a comfort food because the majority of moms can make and have made them; they require neither culinary prowess nor time allowance.

Eating a Chocolate Chip Cookie mentally rewinds you to a time when you had to ask to lick the batter off the beaters. When I sank my teeth into these Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars, my thoughts and cares shrank to prepubescent levels. The napkin belonged on the lap no longer. Runny remnants of chocolate chips claimed my cheeks and chin, my eyelids dropped to a lusty half-mast, and brown sugar became my world. As when I was a child, I wanted only for milk and more cookies. Pairing milk with comfort foods is instinctive; mothers provide us with both.
The Chocolate Chip Cookie, when executed properly, is one of very few foods in the world capable of producing happiness. I mean happiness in the third-grade sense, as a complete if naive satisfaction in the present. It thrills us with sugar and sustains us with fat. It is inextricably bound with the emotional canopy of mom and, by extension, the aqua vitae that is milk. It is a postscript to recess and a prelude to a nap.

It is maternal love made edible. What could be more comforting?

Transportive Chocolate Chip Cookies
(Lifted from Cook's Illustrated)

2 1/8 c. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
12 tbs. butter
1 c. light brown sugar
1/2 c. granulated sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 tsp. vanilla
2 c. chocolate chips (semi/bittersweet)

1. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position. Line a 13 x 9 inch pan with foil. Spray foil-lined pan with nonstick cooking spray.

2. Mix flour, salt, and baking soda together in medium bowl; set aside.

3. Whisk melted butter and sugars in medium large bowl until combined. Add egg, egg yolk, and vanilla and mix well. Using rubber spatula, fold dry ingredients into egg mixture until just combined; do not overmix. Fold in chips and turn batter into prepared pan, smoothing top with spatula.

4. Bake until top is light golden brown, slightly firm to the touch, and edges start pulling away from sides of pan, 27 to 30 minutes. Cool on wire rack to room temperature. Cut into 2-inch squares and serve.