Brownie Bliss

Last week I finally made these brownies. I've been eyeing the recipe for quite a while but never found the time to actually try it out. Since we had a potluck to attend, I thought this might be a good opportunity to try it out and be able to sample the product without eating the entire pan.

Chewy Brownies
From Cook's Illustrated (with minor adaptations)

1/3 cup cocoa (the darker, the better)
1 1/2 tsp instant espresso (optional)
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp boiling water
2 oz unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
4 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp salt
6 oz bittersweet chocolate, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1. Adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease pan or line with foil and grease foil (for easier cutting later).
2. Whisk cocoa, espresso powder and boiling water together in large bowl until smooth. Add unsweetened chocolate and whisk until chocolate is melted. Whisk in melted butter and oil. Add eggs, yolks, and vanilla and continue to whisk until smooth and homogeneous . Whisk in sugar until dissolved. Add flour and salt and mix with rubber spatula until combined. Fold in bittersweet pieces chocolate pieces.
3. Scrape batter into prepared pan and bake until toothpick inserted halfway between edge and center comes out with just a few moist crumbs attached, 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and cool 1 1/2 hours.
4. If pan was lined foil, lift foil and brownies from pan and return to wire rack to cool completely. Cut into 2-inch squares and serve.

Makes 24 brownies.

The ingredients (minus the oil since I forgot to set it out and the espresso powder since I wanted these to be kid friendly).
This is a suggestion from Cook's Illustrated that worked great! To finely chop the chocolate, use a serrated knife. Instead of chopping, it's almost like you're finely grating it.

The cocoa, boiling water, and melted chocolate. Anything with this much chocolate has to turn out good, right? A note on cocoa: the original recipe called for dutch processed cocoa; I couldn't find that in our grocery store so I used the Hershey's Special Dark cocoa and it worked great.

Mixing in the flour.

I'm really bad at chopping chocolate. I either have way too big of chunks (because I'm too lazy to spend the time) or it crumbles into those super-fine shreds seen above. Since this recipe called for chocolate chunks (and I was feeling impatient), I decided to try a different tactic. We got out our Pampered Chef chopper and my magical kitchen elves pounded away. This still wasn't probably the best tactic and resulted in some pretty small chocolate chunks (but was way faster!). Next time around I may just buy chocolate chunks to save myself the time and effort. I'm a wuss like that.

I ran out of foil or I would have tried the foil method. It sounds like it would make getting pretty brownies so much easier. But who am I kidding? Nobody eats brownies because they're pretty.

The finished brownie. The original recipe calls for letting the brownie cool completely before cutting. Being that I'm impatient and chronically unprepared, I didn't have time to let these cool completely before cutting into them. As a result, the brownies were pretty sticky and did not cut up nicely. They still tasted fantastic though. This is by far the best homemade brownie recipe I've tried. The brownie had a lot of chocolate taste and a wonderful, chewy consistency (unlike the somewhat dry versions I've tried before). Pretty or not, this recipe gets a gold star from me!

Marshmallows

Homemade Marshmallows. I didn't even know it was possible until I found a recipe on this site. I was intrigued so I looked around a bit for other recipes. Apparently they were all the rage a little over a year ago. Who knew? Obviously not me. They sounded like fun and a good opportunity to try out the new stand mixer (it can be done with a handheld but doesn't sound like fun).
I chose this recipe because I already follow this blog (and I get weird excitement from actually trying recipes from the blogs I follow) and it seemed simplest. I also found this recipe and will try it another time (it doesn't have eggs so my son would actually be able to eat them).

Homemade Marshmallows
from Smitten Kitchen

1 cup powdered sugar
3 1/2 envelopes (2 Tbsp plus 2 1/2 tsp) unflavored gelatin (less than 1 complete pkg)
1 cup cold water, divided
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/4 tsp salt
2 large egg whites
1 Tbsp vanilla

1. Oil bottom and sides of a 9x13x2-inch metal baking pan and dust bottom and sides with some powdered sugar.
2. In the bowl of a standing electric mixer or in a large bowl sprinkle gelatin over 1/2 cup cold water, and let stand to soften.
3. In a 3-quart heavy saucepan cook granulated sugar, corn syrup, second 1/2 cup of cold water, and salt over low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon until sugar is dissolved. Increase heat to moderate and boil mixture, without stirring, until a thermometer registers 240F, about 12 minutes. Remove pan from heat and pour sugar mixture over gelatin mixture, stirring until gelatin is dissolved.
4. With a standing or hand-held mixer beat mixture on high speed until white, thick, and nearly tripled in volume, about 6 minutes if using standing mixer or 10 minutes if using a hand-held.
5. In a separate medium bowl with cleaned beaters beat egg whites until they just hold stiff peaks. Beat whites and vanilla into sugar mixture until just combined. Pour mixture into baking pan . Sift 1/4 cup powdered sugar evenly over top. Chill marshmallow, uncovered, until firm, at least 3 hours and up to 1 day.
6. Run a thin knife around edges of pan and invert pan onto a large cutting board. Lifting up one corner of inverted pan, with fingers loosen marshmallow and ease onto cutting board. With a large knife (or oiled pizza cutter) trim edges of marshmallow and cut marshmallow into roughly 1-inch cubes. Sift remaining powdered sugar back into your now-empty baking pan, and roll the marshmallows through it, on all 6 sides before shaking off the excess and packing them away.

Makes approximately 96 1-inch cubed marshmallows.

Ingredients (please excuse the photos; our camera is broken so all pictures are from the camera on my cell phone).

The oiled and sugared pan. I was trying an experiment with graham cracker crumbs on half the marshmallows. I was looking to make a smore in one step. I think I'll have to keep trying because while not horrible, it wasn't the effect I was looking for.

Beautiful marshmallowness. The beating seemed to take longer than 6 minutes but I don't know precisely how long it took. I'm really glad I wasn't having to stand there and hold the mixer that long. Such freedom!

Finished marshmallow goo. It's white and very pretty. Just don't touch because you'll never get free if you do (think strings of melted marshmallow everywhere).

Marshmallow sheet out of the fridge and ready to be cut. It's surprisingly springy.

Cut up marshmallows. After this comes my very favorite part of this recipe. After cutting the marshmallows, you roll them in powdered sugar. I found the best (and certainly most enjoyable) way to get the excess sugar off the marshmallow is to simply bounce the marshmallow off a clean corner of the baking pan. It's super fun and made me giggle like a fool.

And another super fun part of making marshmallows at home is trying fun things with them, like dunking them in chocolate or rolling them in graham cracker crumbs. Those were the only things I tried with this rendition but I'm sure you come up with all sorts of creative flavor combinations (like toffee pieces or sprinkles for a little crunch).

The final product: homemade marshmallows are way, way better than the store-bought variety. They're light and airy with a delightful amount of sweetness. Seriously, so good. Try them.

"New" Toy

I went away to my parents for a few days and returned to find that husband had gotten me a "new" toy. The toy is technically older than I am but we'll ignore that fact and think of all the fun new things it lets me do. I haven't had a stand mixer before and this thing still works great! Hooray for the opening of brand new vistas (and for my husband's grandmother who allowed him to bring this home when he found it in her basement: thanks!!)!

Mmm...Cupcakes

I have a confession to make. I'm a blog stalker. Sort of. I've been reading this blog for quite a while. I found it through a link on my sister-in-law's blog and fell in love. All the color and all the super-fun things she does with her kids...it's pretty addicting. We've been in the Wichita area for the entire summer so I kind of feel like I should run into her or someone from her family at any time. It would probably be pretty awkward since of course she wouldn't have a clue who I am but I kind of hope I do get to meet her sometime.
While in the Wichita area, I decided to take her suggestion and tried out Sugar Sisters. It's a super cute bakery that specializes in cupcakes but has just about anything else you can imagine as well (like some very interesting coffee-drink concoctions that involve brown sugar...yum). Even though, it was much too early in the morning to try something with this much sugar, I went for the chocolate peanut butter cupcake. It...was...dreamy. The cupcake was moist and delicious. But it was the frosting that really sold it for me. I have difficulty even describing how good it was...peanut buttery but not overwhelming, creamy, magical. If you live in the Wichita area, you have to go try this place out. If not, you can stare at the picture and dream.

Strawberry Jam

Long ago, in college, one of my professors gave us the assignment to write a list of 100 things we would like to do before we die...a bucket list of sorts (although this is before the movie came out). I remember loving the assignment and coming up with all of those things. While I don't remember everything I wrote down...or even most...I do remember that learning to make jam was on the list. My grandma cans the best homemade jam and I always thought that would be a fun tradition to carry on. My favorite variety is her elderberry jam (my husband ADORES her peach) and since I have not a clue where to find elderberries we decided to use my mom's homegrown strawberries to start with. Let the adventure begin!
My mom washing and dehulling a whole lot of strawberries. This was definitely the most tedious part of the process and she did the lion's share. For that I say, "Thank you."

The strawberries, sugar, and pectin warming and preparing to boil. For this first batch we used the cooked strawberry jam recipe that came with the Sure-Jell. Boy it smelled good!

Unfortunately, it boiled over. The mixture grew so quickly once it started boiling that we weren't able to complete the full minute cooking time the recipe called for.

It also foamed up quite a bit but since we were trying to keep this allergen-free for my son, we didn't add the butter/margarine that is supposed to take care of that problem. We just tried to scoop the foam off and avoid what we couldn't skim.

We also were working without a canner so we tried my mom's canning technique. It involves filling the jar and putting the lid on very tight. Then you immediately flip the jar upside down and allow it to set for a few minutes. After those few minutes, you flip the jar right-side up and hope that you eventually hear the popping sound of it sealing. It can take a while for some of the jars, even a hour or more, as you wait for the contents to cool. Luckily nearly every jar sealed this way for us. Our back-up plan was to use paraffin wax to seal the jam.

The final product: the jam tasted good but our first batch didn't set up. For our second batch we tried the cooked strawberry jelly recipe instead (even though you aren't supposed to have whole fruit in jelly) which worked much better and set up quite nicely. Set or not set, it tastes great (and if we don't decide to recook the first batch will work really well as an ice cream topper)!

A Return to the New

It's been quite some time since I lasted posted a recipe. I hadn't realized just how long until I went to start this post and the blogger dashboard told me that my last post was in February! Wow. I don't want to leave you with the idea that I haven't cooked in 4 months because I have. It's just that my pregnant body wasn't liking any kind of food for quite a while during that and then I just wasn't feeling up to trying something new. It sounded too hard. After a while it was easy to just continue going back to my old standards but really...how fun is that? It's time to break out of my mold (and once again remember to document my efforts).

Orange-Beef Stir Fry
from Better Homes and Gardens

12 oz beef top round steak
1 tsp finely shredded orange peel
1/2 cup orange juice
1 Tbsp cornstarch
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp instant beef bouillon granules
1 Tbsp cooking oil
4 green onions, bias-sliced into 1-inch pieces
1 clove garlic, minced
6 cups coarsely shredded fresh spinach
1 can (8 oz) sliced water chestnuts, drained
2 cups hot cooked rice

1. Trim fat from beef. Partially freeze beef. Thinly slice across the grain into bite-sized pieces. Set aside.
2. For sauce, in a small bowl stir together orange peel, orange juice, cornstarch, soy sauce, sugar, and bouillon granules. Set aside.
3. Preheat cooking oil in a wok or large skillet on medium-high heat. Stir-fry green onions and garlic in hot oil for 1 minute. Remove green onion mixture from wok.
4. Add beef to wok. Stir-fry for 2-3 minutes or until cooked through. Push beef from center of wok.
5. Stir sauce and add to center of the wok. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly. Add spinach and water chestnuts. Stir all ingredients together to coat with sauce. Cover and cook for 1 minute more or until heated through. Serve immediately over hot cooked rice.

Serves 4.

The ingredients (minus the orange juice).

The beef. I know that I definitely used more than the 12 oz of beef that was called for in the recipe. I couldn't think of a good side to go with this (that I wouldn't have to purchase too many ingredients for) and I wanted to stretch it a bit. I think this was more in the 20 oz range but I don't remember exactly now. I also bought the top sirloin steak because it was what we found in the grocery store (and it wasn't overwhelmingly expensive).

A horrible picture of the sauce.

The final product: this was really pretty good. The sauce had a nice orange flavor but wasn't as overpowering as you find in most restaurant versions of orange chicken. The flavors complemented each other well and the water chestnuts added a good crunch to the overall texture. I still felt like it was missing something to make it go from "good" to "ooo, wow I need some more." I think I might mess with the vegetable combination to see if we could add some color and a bit more interest to this solid, albeit boring, meal.

Comfort Food Coma Anyone?

This is my second attempt at homemade noodles. It went much better this time around. I thought I'd also share my chicken and noodle recipe with the world. It's one of my favorite comfort foods and is absolutely perfect on a super snowy day like today.

Noodles
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 beaten egg yolks
1 beaten eggs
1/3 cup water
1 tsp cooking oil or olive oil

1. In a large bowl stir together 1 3/4 cups of the flour and the salt. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture. In a small bowl stir together egg yolks, whole egg, water, and oil. Add egg mixture to flour mixture; mix well.
2. Sprinkle kneading surface with the remaining 1/4 cup clour. Turn dough out onto floured surface. Knead until dough is smooth and elastic (8 to 10 minutes total). Cover and let dough rest for 10 minutes.
3. Divide dough into 4 equal portions. On a lightly floured surface, roll each portion of dough into a 12x9-inch rectangle (about 1/16 inch thick ). (If using a pasta machine, pass each portion of dough through machine according to manufacturer's directions until dough is 1/16 inch thick.) Let stand, uncovered, for 20 minutes. Lightly dust dough with flour. Loosely rool dough into a spiral; cut into 1/4-inch-wide strips. Shake strands to separate; cut into 2- to 3-inch lengths.
4. To servce immediately, cook for 1 1/2 to 2 mintues or until tender but still firm, allowing 1 to 2 minutes more for dried or frozen noodles. Drain.
5. To store cut noodles, spread them on a wire cooling rack. Let noodles dry about 1 hour or until completely dry. Place in an airtight container and refrigerate for up to 3 days. Or dry noodles for at least 1 hour and place then in a freezer bag or freezer container; freeze for up to 8 months.

Makes about 1 pound noodles.

Ingredients for noodles.

Adding wet ingredients to dry.

The dough was super dry but kneading helped that. I guess you would have to have it as dry as this or you'd have to add a whole lot of flour during the kneading process.

My kneaded dough ball after it had rested 10 minutes (although I don't know why it needed to rest; I was the one doing all the work). Eight to 10 minutes of kneading and my arms look tons better. No weight lifting needed if you do this everyday.

At this point I stopped to start prepping the "chicken and" part of the chicken and noodles.

Chicken and Noodles

3 chicken legs (thigh-drumstick piece) (about 2 pounds)

3 cups water

2 bay leaves

1 tsp dried thyme, crushed

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

1 1/2 cups chopped onions (3 medium)

2 cups sliced carrots (4 medium)

1 cup sliced celery (2 stalks)

3 cups wide noodles (6 ounces)

1 cup loose-pack frozen peas

2 cups milk

1/2 tsp salt

3 Tbsp all-purpose flour

1. Skin chicken. In a 4 1/2-quart Dutch oven combine chicken, water, bay leaves, thyme, the 1/2 tsp salt, and the pepper. Add onions, carrots, and celery. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer, covered, for 20 to 30 minutes or until chicken is tender and no longer pink. Discard the bay leaves. Remove chicken from Dutch oven; cool slightly. Remove meat from bones; discard bones. Chop chicken; set aside.
2. Bring broth mixture to boiling. Add noodles; cook for 5 minutes. Stir in frozen peas, 1 1/2 cups of the milk, and the 1/2 tsp salt.
3. In a screw-top jar combine the remainging 1/2 cup milk and the flour. Cover and shake until smooth; stir into noodle mixture. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly. Stir in chopped chicken. Cook and stir for 1 to 2 minutes more or until mixture is heated through.

Makes 6 servings.

Chicken and noodles ingredients (minus, of course, the noodles). All I really had time to do while waiting for the dough to rest was to get out these ingredients and cut my onion. Then it was back to focusing on the noodle dough.

I'm not sure how you're supposed to divide the dough into 4 equal parts but this seemed like the simplest way to me.

You most definitely can roll you dough out like it says to in the recipe but since I have a pasta machine I decided to use it exclusively this time. It worked really well and saved me some time.

I don't know if you can read them but on the knob on the left is a series of numbers. Those numbers tell you how thick the pasta sheet will be.

This is one of the first times through the machine. You start at the largest setting (7) and work your way down to the setting you'd like. I decided, quite arbitrarily, on 3 this time. I had to run the pasta through at least once (if not twice) at each of the settings in between to keep it smooth and even. Last time I learned that step was very important or you end up with lumpy/stretched dough.

My four portions of dough "resting."

While the dough rested, I got the chicken and other ingredients into the pot. Here it is right before I brought it up to a boil. After it was good and boiling, I turned down the heat, stuck a lid on it (I also started boiling some potatoes for mashed potatoes), and once again returned my attention to my noodle dough.

After figuring out how to attach the cutting head (which is embarrassingly simple for how long it took me), I started cutting the noodles. I simply used the fettucine setting because that's about how wide I like my noodles for this recipe. Cut, cut, cut.

After cutting the fettucine, I then cut them down to the length I wanted using kitchen scissors. Simple but effective.

This recipe makes double the noodles you'll need for the chicken and noodles recipe so I laid out the rest of the noodles to dry and freeze for the next time I make this.

Since these are fresh noodles instead of dry or frozen, I cut the cooking time down from 5 minutes to 2 before adding the milk. My husband does not like peas (and I don't like watching him pick them out), so I omit them in my version.

I bet you if I ever thought about keeping a screw-top jar, I could find one easily but I never think about needing one until I read it in step 3. I just use a fork to mix in the flour. I haven't had any issues with lumps or anything so we'll say that it's a fine substitution.

The final product: this is probably one of the best meals I've made. It's creamy and warm and absolutely delicious. I served mine over mashed potatoes but it's just as good plain. For all the extra work that goes into making my own noodles, they are well worth it. I can't remember a time where I've had better noodles; neither can my husband. Their flavor is incredible but it's the texture that really sets them apart. They are delicate and light which is a great compliment to the creaminess of the rest of this dish. I don't know if I can go back to the frozen or even Amish noodles I've used before in this dish.