Baking Better Brownies

I used to believe that the best brownies came from a boxed mix.  I was wrong.  Chocolate Buttermilk Brownies proved that.  I think my belief came from the fact that most of the homemade brownies I tested before called for melted chocolate and they were dry, flavorless, and generally awful.  Experiments in my own kitchen (and anecdotal evidence from my mother and mother-in-law) have led me to believe that melted chocolate is the culprit in dry, flavorless, bad baked goods.  I found that cakes and cookies are better with unsweetened cocoa powder.  It seems wrong that cakes and cookies would have more chocolate flavor by using no prepared chocolate, but that's what I found.

The recipe that taught me homemade brownies can be just as rich, decadent, and fudgey as boxed mixes is excellent, and still a go-to for when I need a brownie fix, but I don't always have buttermilk on hand.  I know I could use sour milk, but sometimes I don't want frosted brownies or I just want something simple.  And I needed a recipe that used my pantry staples, so I kept searching for the perfect brownie recipe.  Unfortunately, most of the basic brownie recipes I found called for the evil melted chocolate, so I discounted them out of hand.  Yes, I know it's prejudicial, but I have not had success with any backed good with melted chocolate and I just don't want to be disappointed, so I have stricken those types of recipes from my kitchen.

We were given a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream, and like most other alcoholic beverages, I am far more likely to cook with the Bailey's than I am to drink it, so when I was idly searching the internet for brownie recipes and happened upon a variation with cocoa powder and Bailey's Irish Cream, I knew that would be the one I needed to test.  The more I mulled this recipe over in my head, the more I knew it was perfect for me -- cocoa powder made them worth trying, and not only would the Bailey's Irish Cream bring a welcome flavor addition, but it could take the place of the buttermilk for the dairy-richness in the final product.  Yes, it was definitely worth trying, but wait....the recipe called for melted chocolate chips.  Uh-oh, that's a problem.  But what if I tweaked the recipe just a bit?  I'd keep the chips, but add them at the end of mixing, to make them a sort of double chocolate brownie.  I would work with this.  Yes, I could.

So I tried them, with the tweak.  I think I have found another go-to brownie recipe.  The original recipe suggested a sprinkle of powdered sugar, but I decided against that as it would be too much of a good thing and might make the brownies too sugary-sweet.  The end result are rich, dense, fudgey brownies, with a bit of a kick.

Bailey's Irish Cream Double Chocolate Brownies 

1 cup flour
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup butter, melted
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
⅓ cup Bailey's Irish Cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
⅓-½ cup dark chocolate baking chips

• Preheat oven to 350°F.
• Line an 8x8 inch cake pan with aluminum foil, and grease foil.
• In medium bowl, sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.
• In large bowl, whisk together butter and eggs, until ribbons begin to form.
• Add sugar and continue whisking until mixture is light, creamy, and lemon colored.
• Add Irish Cream and vanilla, whisking until well incorporated.
• Stir in dry ingredients, just until everything is combined.
• Fold in chocolate chips.
• Turn batter into prepared pan, spreading evenly in pan.
• Bake at 350°F for 20-30 minutes, or until toothpick inserted slightly off center comes out clean.
• Cool completely in pan on wire rack.
• Remove from pan and foil; cut into 16 squares.

Adapted from:  Bailey's Irish Cream Brownies, Gimme Some Oven

My observations:

• The batter is a bit stiff so be careful to spread the batter all the way to the edges of the pan.
• These are fudgey-style brownies, even when fully baked, they will be rich, moist and dense.
• The Bailey's Irish Cream flavor is strong, even after baking; I would recommend against overindulging, though 2 brownies would not be a bad thing.
• Next time I am debating using white chocolate chips or walnuts in the brownies.  I don't think either would be out of place.
• I also don't think the flavored varieties of Bailey's would be a bad choice.

In the Kitchen April 21-27

I did fairly well with this week's menu.  I made everything I had planned, even if I didn't make it when I had it planned.

Monday's leftover Macaroni Mickey Mouse was good, never as good as when it's fresh from the oven, but still good enough for a quick, easy dinner.  I added peas to it because I am still on a quest to get more fruits and vegetables into our diets.

Tuesday was supposed to be beef stroganoff, and I did make it after a fashion.  I had some fresh mushrooms from my in-laws, and was intending to use those for the dish, but when I started cleaning them and prepping them for the stroganoff, I was not happy with them.  When I first looked at them I thought they were button mushrooms, but as it turned out, they were portobello and I do not like portobello mushrooms.  I tried peeling a few, but ended up ripping them to shreds, so I switched to cleaning the gills out of the caps, but that left a mess of realistically unusable mushroom pieces, so I just gave up.  I had a bag of carrots in the fridge and decided that thinly sliced carrots would be just as good in the sauce, so I made the unorthodox substitution and went on with dinner as planned.  It made for an interesting dinner, not bad, just not traditional stroganoff by any means.  I served the creation with a mix of broccoli & cauliflower, to add vegetables to our diet, but also because I like broccoli & cauliflower.

Wednesday I had planned to make Naan Bruschetta Pizzas and have Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies, but I had to stay up until nearly 5:00 am to conduct some business in the US and was exhausted by the time dinner time rolled around.  I gave up on the cookies, but made the pizzas.  I had a couple of naan leftover from a previous week's menus and used those as the base for a pizza topped with a variation of the Bruschetta topping from Father Dominic Garramone's Thursday Night Pizza.  It was very good, and I may have to do it again sometime.  It was a great way to use up the naan and the tomatoes that were almost at the end of their usable life.  I have really become intolerant of waste of any kind, but food waste really irks me, especially when it's my money I'm wasting by not using the food.  So I try to schedule meals to use up what I have on hand within the product's usable life.  I am really pleased with myself.  I have not really thrown out too many things because they have gone bad.  And trying not to waste food really keeps down the number of "science projects" in the fridge.  (In all honesty, I would rather throw out the container than have to deal with food that has crossed over to science project status.)

After sleeping well Thursday, I was ready to tackle the cookies, so I made them along with the Spam Cornettes and Spiced Apples for dinner.  The cookies are fairly easy, except for the fact that I did not allow the shortening to soften for long enough so I had a hard time creaming it into the batter.  In the end, I had to knead it in by hand, making sure not lumps were left.  It's times like these that I really miss having shelf-stable shortening.  The blocks of rock-solid must-be-refrigerated shortening are really for the birds.  If I could get the same results with butter, I would switch to using butter exclusively, but I really find some things, particularly cookies and biscuits are better with shortening than with butter.  Anyway, cookies made, I tackled the spiced apples.  I really forget how much I love stewed, spicy apples as a side dish.  I really should make them more often.  In the US we would often have spiced apple rings with breakfast-for-dinner and I miss those.  The canned apple rings are not available here in Australia, but apples are always in the supermarkets, so I can make a really good approximation of the rings with fresh apples.  The hardest part of the whole process is peeling the apples.  And I guess you don't really HAVE to peel the apples, but I find cooked peel to have an off-putting texture, so I do.  After peeling, it's just boiling the apple slices in a spiced simple syrup until they are soft.  Ham cornettes were a favorite breakfast-for-dinner dish in my house growing up and I see no reason not to keep them as one in my house here.  They are a cross between a fritter and a pancake, with ham and corn, pan fried and served with maple syrup.  The original recipe called for diced onion to be added to the fritter batter, but we long ago decided to omit that as in our opinion, it didn't bring anything to the party.  I made them with some Spam I had and needed to use.  I think it might have been better with original Spam, but mine was Turkey Spam and the fritters turned out a bit bland.  Also, I used frozen whole kernel corn rather than canned, and I had not thawed the corn before adding it to the batter.  That was a mistake.  The still-frozen corn chilled the batter so much that the fritters were nearly burned before they were cooked all the way through.  On the whole, it was not my best effort with the fritters.

Friday's Lentil Burgers were good.  I had made them before, but this batch was particularly tasty, and fried very well.  That's a bit unusual for me as I have not mastered pan frying on my stove.  Even after three years in the house, I have not gotten the hang of the gas burners on my stovetop and struggle to get pan fried things done well.  I grew up with an electric stove.  I think my gas stove knows that I prefer electric and that knowledge only contributes to our love/hate relationship.  I know, I'm turning in my foodie card now for preferring electric stoves over gas, but it's the truth.  The Yellow Rice was not cooked on the stovetop, but in my rice cooker, so I had not problems with it.  It was very good, but it needs a bit of tweaking to be perfect.  I do not know if the floral undertones in the taste were the result of the saffron threads or the jasmine rice, or just the lingering scent of the cinnamon in the leftover spiced apples I served with the meal, but I found the dish to be just a little to floral for my preference.  I will have try it again with regular long grain rice to see if I can copy my favorite (but unavailable in Australia) packaged mix.  It came very, very close, but for the floral flavor notes.

Saturday brought a Creamy One-Pot Lemon Pasta, Homemade Rolls, and a Mandarin Yogurt Fluff.  The Lemon Pasta is a variation of a recipe I found online.  I substitute evaporated milk for an equal amount of heavy (whipping) cream, to both lighten up the dish and all but eliminate the possibility of unappetizing curdling when blending the lemon juice with cream.  Even with the substitution, it's a deceptively heavy meal component, and I generally serve it as a main dish with a side of bread and a light dessert.  Today's bread was going to be Pull-Apart Clover Rolls, but then I found a copycat for Pillsbury Crescent Rolls and I wanted to try it as I have missed dough in a can.  The rolls came out very well; the only issue was it was a bit cool in my house and I may have rushed the rising process and used the dough before it was fully risen.  Other than that and the more natural color to the dough, it was almost exactly as I remember the dough in a can to be.  I will have to keep that in mind for when I want to do things that call for crescent roll dough.  Mandarin Yogurt Fluff is a variation of a recipe for a strawberry gelatin salad, but since the flavor comes from the yogurt and the fruit added rather than the gelatin, it's possible to mix and match flavors.  This time I used a Lemon Creme yogurt with mandarin orange segments.  The end result is a deceptively dense molded salad, but a really nice end to a heavy meal, and with the oranges and pineapple, it falls right in with my goal of trying to get more fruits and vegetables in our diet.  I made the salad on Saturday, but completely forgot about it and was too full after the lemon pasta dinner to consider it, so I left in the fridge for Sunday's dinner.

Sunday's beans & rice have to be one of the best versions I've made here.  I used a 15-bean soup mix and kept it simple, with just an onion, some garlic, and a bay leaf for seasoning.  About a hour before I was going to serve the dish, I added some vegetable stock powder -- mainly because the stock powder has a good bit of salt and you never salt beans before they are soft.  The end result was truly the best version of beans & rice I have made, I think.  I'm a true New Orleanian in that I do not care what beans are over my rice as long as there are beans and rice.  I'm equally happy with limas or black-eyed peas as I am with Great Northerns or the traditional dark red kidney beans.  By using the 15-bean soup mix, I get a bit of a bunch of different beans (15 different ones) so there are a good mix of bean flavors and textures.  I am not sure if the mix made this a great pot or what, but it was fantastic!  I served the resulting beany greatness over plain long grain white rice, accompanied by some leftover crescent rolls from Saturday night and the Mandarin Yogurt Fluff.  It was a great meal, and one I really wish I could have shared with everyone (but then I would not have any beans leftover for bean burritos in the coming week, and I am looking forward to refrying the beans…)

On the whole it was a good week in my kitchen.  And I have some leftovers to use in the coming week, not only for bean burritos but also for lunches.  It looks to be another good week in Lynn's kitchen.

Silent Sunday

Weekly Menu -- April 21 - April 27

This week is a bit unusual because I am planning a meal on Monday.  It's more often that I have tap class on Monday nights and dearest works late, so I use that as my night off from cooking and plan a "do-it-yourself" or "pick-up" dinner.  But since tap class hasn't begun again for the term, and dearest is off because of a public holiday.  And even though Monday's meal is leftovers, it's more planning, cooking, and dishes than I usually do.

Monday:  Leftover Macaroni Mickey Mousse, Peas
Tuesday:  Beef Stroganoff over egg noodles, Broccoli
Wednesday:  Naan Bruschetta Pizza, Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies
Thursday:  Spam Cornettes, Spiced Apples
Friday:  Lentil Burgers, Yellow Rice, Mandarin Yogurt Fluff
Saturday:  One-Pot Creamy Lemon Pasta, Pull-Apart Rolls, Mandarin Yogurt Fluff
Sunday:  Beans & Rice, Pull-Apart Rolls, Black Forest Sundaes

On the whole it looks like a pretty good week dinner-wise.  Then again, I almost always think that the week looks good dinner-wise before I get fully into it and cooking.  We'll have to wait and see how closely I stick to the plan.

Successful Sacrifices

For Lent this year, I decided to give up being online during the day (which I defined as a work-day, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm), with the exception of streaming Jeopardy! and Skype for chats/calls to my Mom.

Now that it's Easter Monday, I am reflecting on how well I did.  I had a couple of days when I needed to be online because of a problem with my 401K/retirement account, but other than that, I was strong and did fairly well.  A couple of days I jumped the 5:00 pm time by a few minutes because I needed a recipe for dinner that I had saved only as a link or as part of an email, but over all I was offline during the day.

I decided to give up being online because I found myself spending all day sitting on the couch with the computer open in front of me, intending to do things, but never actually getting up and doing them.  And I found myself retreating more and more into the world of message boards, getting caught up in the drama of watching other people's train wrecks.  I began to feel bad about myself and I needed to make a change.

The six weeks of Lent was a great time to make the change.  And I was successful, I think.  I admit that  allowing myself to stream Jeopardy! and Skype with my Mom was probably cheating in using the internet, but the sacrifice had to be something I knew I would have a chance of actually doing.  In the end, I am very proud of myself for turning off the internet during the day.  It was hard to avoid the internet, especially with some of events of the world happening.  And the worst was just Saturday when I was listening to Marc Cohn's album Join the Parade and the liner notes indicated that one of the instruments played was a chamberlin.  I had no idea what one was, and it was so very tempting to just pop on Google and look it up.  I resisted -- at least until after 5:00.  I'm still not sure if that was technically cheating, but I did avoid it until the evening.

All in all it was a successful Lenten sacrifice and I think I may be able to keep it up now that Lent is over.

Silent Sunday

The Government's Definition of "Fair Go"

I grew up in the largest metropolitan area in my state.  It was also home to one of the the largest and busiest ports in the country.  Additionally, the area was an international tourist destination.  In many ways, my hometown is not at all unlike Sydney.  It's certainly one of those places that only needs the city name for people to identify it.  And if there may be more places with the same name, I'm willing to bet that only people with connections to those areas know of them.

The area I grew up in did not have two commercial airports.  It has one international airport.  The functional mass transportation system is hardly worth mentioning.  The cruise ship port is secondary to the container port operations.  The interstate and road system is adequate for the needs of the area 30 or 40 years ago.

And the situation in my hometown does not look to get significantly better in the near (or even far off) future.  And not for lack of requesting funding from both the State and Federal government.  The money for necessary improvements is just not there.  And that is no one's fault.  Money is precious and infrastructure is expensive, and frankly, does not have a really good return on the investment, especially as often as it must be upgraded to keep up with demand, let alone normal and expected wear & tear.  There is a limit to how much can be allocated to the alleged benefit of a relative few versus the needs of an entire country.

That said, I would love for my hometown to be gifted all the money it needs to fulfill its potential as both a home for its residents and as one of the the top tourist destinations.  But I know that will never happen, not with a whole state and country vying for monies from the same limited pool.  I understand that.  I understand that other projects must be prioritized to give everyone in the state and the country an equal opportunity at the kind of life I had growing up.  That's the way it should be.  Every citizen should have an equal chance at the same kind of life.  There should be monies spent in ALL areas of a state or country.  In the end, that kind of fairness benefits the whole.  I'm not saying my native country is totally fair or equitable in the way it allocates the limited resources of the budget.

But I have never seen a country so willing to benefit one relatively small area of the country at the obvious detriment to the rest of the country as I have in Australia.  And the proposed second airport in the suburbs of Sydney is only the most recent example of the unfair budgetary practices.  I cannot fathom how the Federal Government considers this either a fair or adequate use of the limited funds available in the budget.

Locally, the residents of Western Sydney are less than a half day's drive from an international airport.  And it's a nice international airport at that. I've flown through it, as a continuing passenger, an international transfer passenger, and as a tourist to Sydney.  I have experienced all aspects of the airport in Sydney.  It's nice, clean, well-maintained, and functional.  Barring any significant damage through acts of nature, I see no reason to replace it with a second.  Even the air traffic situation is no worse than I have seen in airports in other parts of the country.  I have certainly never waited on the ground or in the terminal for flights in Sydney as long as I have in Atlanta's airport.

Speaking as a tourist, I would not want to spend the outrageous amounts to fly from another country to Sydney and find that the ride from the airport to the tourist part of town is over an hour!  After a 14 hour flight, an additional hour just sounds like torture.  Besides any money saved by being that far out will be eaten up in the cost of getting to where I actually want to be.  Flights, hotels, and public transportation would need to be significantly cheaper for tourists to prefer to fly through that airport as opposed to Kingsford-Smith.  And knowing the way things are priced in Australia, I am certain they will not.

I understand that Sydney is THE area the rest of the world thinks of when thinking of Australia.  But the Federal Government knows Sydney is not the ONLY part of Australia.  They should behave as though they remember that fact.  Just because the majority of the leaders of the government come from the greater-Sydney area doesn't mean everyone does.

And while I'm in the area, let me just say that at least 75% of the continent can be accurately described as "Western Sydney."  What about those residents?  I'm sure the government doesn't have their welfare in mind with this plan.

I understand the second airport is a done deal and the funding has been allocated.  But that does not mean I support it, or think it is anything more than political patronization and/or favoritism from narrow-minded, narrow-thinking, bigoted, elitist men who have temporary control of the country's checkbook.  It certainly shows me that they NEVER had my best interests in mind as they were making decisions.  And I can guarantee it means that I will never gift my vote to any of them.

I have truly never seen a country who treats its citizens in such different ways as Australia does.  Even in my home country, I knew there was a difference between the city-dwellers and the residents of rural areas.  But Australia takes that disparity to new levels.  As far as I can tell, if you're not in Sydney, you don't count.

What a way to give all Australians a Fair Go.