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.