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.

A Dog Defeated

A week ago Gourmet made me guffaw: the magazine proclaimed that a certain Devil Dog Cake, while as easy to make as a pan of brownies, could gratify every desire that brownies could not. This I found hard to believe. I baked the Devil Dog Cake, following the recipe to the letter, so that I might judge for myself the cake's caliber.

As promised, the Devil Dog Cake was a cinch to prepare. I had only one hang-up: the direction to add water to the cake batter flew in the face of my bakerly instincts. The liquids I usually add to batters threaten to halt one's heart upon overconsumption: melted butter, oils, milks, and creams. But I remained faithful to Gourmet's recipe and hosed down the batter. Truth be told, I hoped this whole ordeal would end in failure. To this end, the airy, mousse-like batter was not a good sign.

The Devil Dog Cake puffed up proudly in the oven, its ego no doubt swollen by Gourmet's fawning. I let it rest for a few hours and then attempted the marshmallow frosting; the pathetic outcome of that endeavor is made obvious in these photos. Fortunately the frosting mattered little in the case of Devil Dog Cake v. Brownie.

My first bite: the cake dissolved into a thousand feathery crumbs the instant it touched my tongue. Then, curiously, the little crumbs clumped back together and formed a buttery wad of cake that was so dense as to be nearly suffocating. There was a chocolate flavor, sure, but I did not taste chocolate. A tinny, bittersweet sapor was all that suggested cocoa content. This struck me as familiar, and now I realize why.

No chocolate cake is chocolatey enough to cure a craving.

Reflect upon your last - or even your best - experience with chocolate cake. Stripped of its icing and other accouterments, could it have satisfied an intense desire for chocolate? Or was the texture a tad too lightweight, its flavor a bit on the bland side? To me, a chocolate cake is only as good as the buttercreams slathered on it. Yet a brownie is a ganache-turned-gâteau, a forkable frosting, a candy bar made cakey. Brownies require just enough eggs, flour, butter, sugar, and talent to properly showcase good chocolate; cakes require just enough chocolate to showcase good eggs, flour, butter, sugar and talent.

This court rules in favor of the defendant.

Libel!

Q: Does a food blogger whose site draws a mere 35 visitors a day (hi Mom!) have a future in food writing?

A: No, but if she did she would kill it now by publically boycotting the February 2008 issue of Gourmet.

I was gazing wantonly at Gourmet magazine's dessert recipes when a seemingly innocuous little caption cut me to the quick. I read the sentence only once before stashing Gourmet back in the magazine bin, vengefully mussing up its glossy cover in the process. My memory is hazy with hate, but I believe the caption - referencing a Devil Dog Cake - declared: This cake is as easy to prepare as a pan of brownies, but it will leave you breathlessly satisfied in a way no brownie ever could.

It is so like Gourmet to hate on plebian pleasures. Pure, uncomplicated, classic desserts are never innovative enough for them. For example, a recipe search for "apple pie" on the Gourmet.com website yielded two results: Fried Apple Pies and Warm Sweet Potato Pudding with Apples and Chestnuts. Limiting a recipe's title to two words is, apparently, too in-the-box for Gourmet's mode of thought.
The folks of Gourmet are more than pretentious; they are pharisees. I wondered, To what lackluster brownie recipe might this Devil Dog Cake have been compared to yield such a foul footnote? I searched Gourmet.com's virtual recipe box again. What did I find? NOTHING.

These condescending epicurians have passed judgement with a deaf ear to the defense. America's favorite bar dessert deserves a retrial, which is why I - the self-proclaimed Baroness of Brownies - will bake the Devil Dog Cake. With blindfold on and scales in hand, I shall decide whether its claim to superiority is justified.

Consider the glove thrown, Gourmet.

Pistachios for Whippersnappers

Let's get this comparison out of the way:

Moving on. Green is a color not naturally found in the dessert world. Where it does appear it is light in hue: key lime pies are pale yellow with green undertones, pastel green is the visual clue for mint, and matcha effects a muted grey-green in baked goods.

There is one exception to this generality, an exception our grandparents would be quick to point out if they were quick to do anything: eerily vivid pistachio green. Pistachios seem to have been in vogue decades ago, rising to stardom in ice cream cartons and bakeries nationwide. My generation, with its blithe indifference to the past, turns up its nose at neon-green sweetstuffs. And synthetic materials. And hard work. I digress.

On a mission to introduce the pistachio flavor to my peers, I brought these Pistachio Greenies to a party (a party with no thematic relationship to the Wizard of Oz, Halloween, or Ghost Busters). I cloaked the lurid green glow of the bars with a matte glaze of dark chocolate. A few beers into the fête, all culinary inhibitions - and all the Greenies - disappeared.

It only takes one bite to realize that the Pistachio Greenies are much more mild than their looks would suggest. Pistachios impart a mellow maple-vanilla flavor to the bar. Their somewhat cloying aftertaste is counterbalanced by a slick of bittersweet chocolate. For a dessert that counts pudding mix as one of its ingredients, Pistachio Greenies are surprisingly haute. The soft crunch of chopped pistachios adds texture to the cake-like bars, and the dark chocolate enamel brings a savory depth to an otherwise saccharine treat.

If Pistachio Greenies don't smooth over generational disparities, they will at least impress guests at your next costume party.

[Recipe adapted from this Pudding Brownies recipe. Substitute pistachio pudding mix for chocolate pudding mix (instant pudding is fine) and add chopped pistachios for nuts. Dark chocolate glaze is made by combining 3 tbs. butter, 4 oz. bittersweet chocolate chips, and 2 oz. unsweetened chocolate in a double boiler. Spread on cooled Greenies; refrigerate until set]