For March 3

Two new recipes this week, both from new Christmas/post-Christmas cookbooks:

Sweet and Salty Brownies, from Matt Lewis & Renato Poliafito, Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented
Almond Sables, from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies

A few weeks ago I made a recipe for brownies from the original Baked cookbook. Baked is a bakery in Brooklyn founded by two guys who had been in advertising and quit to open this bakery. I have not been there, but it is apparently very popular, and if their recipes are any indication, must be just a heavenly place. They now have two cookbooks, the original Baked and the newer Baked Explorations. In the original cookbook, they have a brownie recipe that is one of the very best brownies I have ever made, hands down - and I have made quite a few at this point! It is a great recipe and really very straightforward to make. One of the things I love about brownie recipes is that the techniques are very simple and the results you get are usually great. The work/reward ratio is very favorable!

Well, in Baked Explorations they take that recipe and tweak it by (1) adding a layer of homemade caramel and (2) adding salt to the caramel and to the brownies. I know that salty desserts are a big thing right now, and who knows how long this will last, but for some reason this week I was compelled to make this recipe. Well, this doesn't fall in the favorable work/reward ratio, because you have to make your own caramel as part of the deal on this recipe. I had never made caramel before, and having done so I expect that the next time it will be easy breezy, but the first time through, it was pretty terrifying! It involves cooking water, sugar and corn syrup to a precise temperature - 350 degrees - and then quickly removing from heat and adding other things. But wait too long, or let it get too hot, and it goes from "not yet" to "oh sh-t" really quickly - from dark amber to black and burned. So there is a lot of careful pot-watching involved, and a digitial instant-read thermometer is a recommended utensil for this one. Anyway, after you pull it off at just the right moment, you then stir in heavy cream. The recipe warns it will bubble up, but man, the pot looks like a witch's cauldron for a couple of minutes in that process. Assuming all goes well, you end up with a nice, salty caramel - and more than you need for the recipe, so you get some for your ice cream sundaes as a side benefit (assuming, again, that it is not black and ruined).

After making the caramel sauce, you make the brownie batter, spoon half of it in the prepared pan, carefully add caramel sauce, then add dollops of the remaining batter, and then carefully spread it to cover the caramel. I can't really say that this was as easy as it sounds here, but in the end it seems we got it mostly covered, and then into the oven it went. Now, I love these guys and I love the book, but when you have a recipe with a layer of caramel in the middle, an instruction that the brownies are done when a tester inserted in the center comes out with "a few crumbs" is not a very helpful guide - with the caramel, you will never get to the promised land. So it requires a good eye.

OK, now, having said all of the above - am I whining? - I will say this. These are amazing. Amazing! According to the cookbook, they were featured on the Food Network as one of the best salty foods in America, and I can understand the accolade. They have so much going on - the chocolate, the caramel, the salt - it is a flavor explosion. The effort is, in the end, definitely worth the result!

Playing yang to the brownies' yin, we had almond sables as the other baked good this week. I think that Alice Medrich's various sables recipes are just inspired, and are right now among my most favorite cookies. Sable is French for "sandy" and these are a form of shortbread/sugar cookie from France. In Alice's hands, they are characterized by limiting the number ingredients, to allow the purity of flavor shine through. Here, you grind almonds into a meal as part of the cookie - the additional ingredients are very few, and you are left with a very delicate cookie that is marked more by its texture than by any overwhelming flavor. This is a wonderful cookie. It is also the first of the sables that I am making from her new cookie cookbook, and one thing that is interesting is that this recipe was made entirely in a food processor - until now, her sables recipes have all relied on a stand mixer. It was interesting to see this new technique incorporated. Since it reduced the amount of bowls etc for cleanup, it was great!!!