Milk & Cookies

Remember when I made those brownies from scratch? Well, they came out okay but I was a little disappointed and chalked it up to the quality of the chocolate. So this time I made them again, from the same recipe, with Ghirardelli 100% chocolate. It really makes a difference! I still think there’s room for improvement if I mess around with the egg/sugar/flour ratio, but this was a pretty good first step.

I'm running out of outdoor photo settings for my baked goods!

Camouflage

Congratulations to my dear sister Lucy, who graduated from college this May! I had this Saltine bark at her graduation party and decided I had to try making it myself. So she gave me the recipe and it’s delicious!

Ingredients list:

• About 1 (maybe a little more) sleeve of Saltine crackers
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup butter
• 1 11 oz. package of semi sweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 to 1 cup of walnuts (I substituted hazelnuts)

A Saltine platoon

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350
• Cover a cookie sheet with foil. Line up the saltine crackers on the sheet to completely cover it. It should take 1 sleeve of crackers or a little more.
• Mix the brown sugar and butter and boil/heat it for about 3 minutes (microwave or stovetop).
• Pour mix over saltines.
• Bake 7 minutes.
• Remove tray from oven and cover with chocolate chips. Wait for them to melt and then spread the chocolate evenly over the crackers. Sprinkle the nuts on top.
• Put in freezer to cool.

Yummy

Basically, this is a layer of saltines, a layer of caramelized sugar/butter, a layer of chocolate and a layer of nuts. Hard to go wrong with that! The only problem I had is my caramel layer is a bit too chewy. I’m not sure how I could have fixed that – maybe bake it less time? Anyways, I think it’s worth it. Picking caramel out of your teeth is a small price to pay for something this delicious.

I have gotten a special request (threat?) from my friend Blythe – she needs fudge! Mmmm… hard to say no to fudgey chocolatey goodness. Sadly, I don’t know how much fudge she’ll get as I seem to be eating most of it myself! Anyways, I’ve decided to continue the trend from last time of remaking a previous recipe (Wilma’s Fudge) and then practicing my new hobby – outdoor baked good photography.

Fudge & Flowers

I was going to take pictures of fudge at the pool, but when I got there the pool was closed off! It’s probably for the best as I don’t have one of those floating pool snack trays. Maybe next time… If the pool repair work is anything like our porch repair work, it should only take about a year for us to have access again.

In other news, our cat Ewok is sick.  She’s the one in the picture in the last post. She had a fever and had lost 1 pound (10% of her body weight). We don’t know what was wrong with her but antibiotics seem to be helping. Now we are trying to convince her to eat more, poor baby! So today the house has been smelling alternately like fudge and various odiferous meaty cat-food. (By the way, the word “odiferous” is from our vet, who specifically recommended odiferous foods!)

Until next time.

I did end up making those brownies I mentioned after I finally picked up some eggs. I made them from scratch, using Baker’s chocolate (100% cacao). This is the way we made brownies when I was a kid, and I always was kind of a snob about it! I didn’t like brownies from a mix as they were usually too cakey. Now, I have to say… the mixes are getting pretty good. Everyone who used mixes thought I was crazy for making brownies from scratch instead of the easy way. Actually, making them from scratch is incredibly easy but you don’t have to tell people that…

I just followed the recipe on the Baker’s chocolate box (“One Bowl Brownies”):

• 4 squares Baker’s unsweetened chocolate
• 3/4 cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 cup flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt chocolate and butter – the recipe says to microwave it and that’s what I always did as a kid, but our only large microwaveable bowl is currently full of cat food. So I used a double boiler instead which is just as easy. Then stir in sugar. Then eggs and vanilla. And finally the flour.

Grease a 13″x9″ pan. If you’re smart, line it with aluminum foil so you don’t have to wash the pan! Even so, you have to grease the foil. Pour the batter into the pan. Bake 30-35 minutes.

These came out pretty good, nice and fudgy, but I think I have been spoiled by great chocolate. I actually think the brownies from the Ghirardelli mix may be better than these from scratch! Heresy! I think it just comes down to the quality of the chocolate. All 100% cacao is not created equal…

Dry ingredients

For the past few years, my friends Sarah and Harley have had completely opposing winter schedules from Jason and I. They live on the east coast and this year flew to the west coast for Christmas. Meanwhile, we’re living on the west coast and flew to the east coast for Christmas. Various combinations of travel schedules have foiled Christmas hanging-out for the past few years. Fortunately this year we overlapped for a full day, which we spent making rum balls and gingerbread cookies, eating thai food, listening to Christmas music, and playing Apples to Apples. Fun!

Gosling's

There’s a special place in my heart for my own family’s Christmas traditions of course, but having spent a large part of my teenage years at Sarah’s house, there is a special place in my heart for her family’s traditions too. In particular, I have Christmasey memories of caroling parties and rum balls, my first experience with delicious yet alcoholic desserts.

This recipe comes from Sarah’s father, who recommends not driving after consuming a few of these.

All mixed together. It looks delicious in person but the camera is not too flattering.

Recipe:

• 2 cups of Vanilla wafers – crumbed real fine.
• 1 cup of walnuts if you like ‘em (we did!)
• 1 cup confectionary sugar (1.5 cups if you leave out the nuts – we didn’t)
• 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder (4 if you leave out the nuts or if you want a real chocolate flavor – okay… you know I want a real chocolate flavor)
• 2 tablespoons of corn syrup
• 1/2 cup of dark rum or brandy (we used Gosling’s dark rum)

Zoe and Sarah making batter into balls

The best thing about these cookies, according to Sarah, is that they are made out of other cookies! Here’s how you make them: In a food processor, process the Nilla wafers into fine crumbles. Then process the nuts. Add the confectioner’s sugar and cocoa powder. Add the corn syrup and rum and stir together until homogeneous. Finally, form the batter into balls and roll in confectioner’s sugar. Refrigerate overnight, then enjoy! We didn’t have time to refrigerate them overnight, but a couple hours seemed to be enough.

Then, don’t drive! Ride a reindeer instead!

Completed rum balls, and one of Santa's reindeer