For April 14

The last few weeks, there has been some defensible virtue to at least one of the cookies I've baked.  Not this week!  I will say, in my defense, however, that the second recipe was a "stumble upon" accident - I was actually browsing the book looking for a particular chocolate meringue recipe to make, but before finding it I found this other chocolate recipe and, well, uh, why make a meringue with no fat when you can make mini-cakes with lots and lots of it?  Oy.

Clementine's Butterscotch Brownies
Lucy's Chocolate Minis, from Alice Medrich, Chewy, Gooey, Crispy Crunchy Melt In Your Mouth Cookies

All that dark coloring comes from brown sugar, not chocolate!

OK.  First, the "brownies."  This recipe was recently published in the LA Times, and it comes from Clementine, an amazingly wonderful bakery/cafe near my office in Century City.  Clementine is famous for its baked goods, which are truly great, as well as for its elaborate annual Grilled Cheese Month celebrations (April is National Grilled Cheese Month, and Clementine's 10th annual celebration is going on now).  We often get food from Clementine for our Friday lunch in the office, and these butterscotch brownies are a regular in the dessert trays that come along with their sandwiches and salads.  These are called butterscotch brownies, but it is a bit of a misnomer, because there is no chocolate in them, which makes me feel that the "brownie" part of the name is undeserved.  On the other hand, they have a lot of dark brown sugar - the good, real stuff, not the faux, imitation dark brown sugar we normally find in the store these days - and they are, well, brown; indeed, they are a deep caramel color and have a chewy texture that makes them wonderful.  These also have a good amount of salt, which is intentional.  These have a very high reward to effort ratio, as do many bar cookies - there is not too much involved in making these, and they are a great way to make a pan of delicious goodies for a potluck or to bring for an event.  Highly recommended even for the beginning baker!

As you can see, the mint-infused white chocolate ganache was a little too thin!

The second item, well, the name is not very revealing, is it?  Who is Lucy?  Mini what?  Well, these are little chocolate "cakes," somewhat richer than a cupcake, but not as dense as a brownie.  They are made in mini-cupcake pans, and so you will think of them as mini-cupcakes.  That is OK, let's not get too hung up on the "this-or-that" taxonomy, better to just enjoy them.  They are small, bite-sized chocolate cakes.  Mmmmm....

Now, the recipe does not call for them to be iced or anything, but does have an option to ice them with one of two different recommended icings.  I have made one of them - a mint-infused white chocolate ganache, and it is delicious! - but so far it is too liquid to frost them properly.  I don't think that is going to change, or I am going to have the time available to frost them even if it does, between now and tonight, but we'll see.  The ganache is so good (and, since I am not a white chocolate fan, that is saying something coming from me) that I would like to figure out how to use it.  Andrew loves mint, and I think he probably spent the day at home cradling the bowl, given how he reacted after tasting the icing last night.  So maybe there won't be any left and my problem will be solved.  I hope so?  Or I hope not?  So confusing....

For April 7

OK, a couple of new recipes this week, very yin and yang:

Whole Wheat Biscotti
Robert's Brownies My Way

both from Alice Medrich, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt In Your Mouth Cookies

Let's start with the biscotti.  This is an interesting recipe.  It calls for 100% whole wheat pastry flour.  Many recipes use a mix of white and whole wheat flours, but here we go all the way.  The only other major element to the recipe is nuts - in this case, a fairly large quantity of toasted almonds.  And while it includes a good amount of dark brown sugar, these are probably the least sweet cookie/bar/biscotti/etc. that I have ever made - Myosen, you will like these for a breakfast food!  Anyway, these are a very interesting recipe and cookie, but not my favorite.  The nuttiness of the wheat flour and of the almonds is very close; it could use a little pop! I think if I made them again I would throw in some chopped dried cherries of something to give a contrasting flavor.  Overall, they are a nice dipping cookie, not too sweet, lots of whole grains and roasted nuts, very virtuous - I just wish they had a tad more flavor.

OK, well, and then there are the brownies.  I had been browsing through David Lebovitz' Ready for Dessert as well as Alice Medrich's Chewy Gooey for ideas, and both of them include this recipe!  The recipe was originally from Robert Steinberg, the co-founder of Scharffen Berger chocolate, and it was made to showcase their first chocolate, the 70% bittersweet.  David and Alice have both made a few adjustments to the original recipe, but both give credit to Robert for the base recipe.  I used the Scharffen Berger 70% in the recipe (which means the chocolate alone for this cost around $20), and added pecans and also some cacao nibs.  This is a dense, fudgy brownie, not for those who like cakey brownies.  It is intense - a lot of chocolate goes into these babies - the basic recipe (I triple it) calls for 8 oz. of chocolate and only 1.75 oz. of flour, so you can see how this plays out.  Whatever virtue you feel from eating the biscotti will be quickly dashed when you bite into a brownie.  But, well, you know, the middle way and all that.

And since Roshi asked for a photo of the tester, how can we say no?

Bodhi-Heart fulfilling his function.