Brrrrr-ownies

We're back from yet another fantastic European/UK adventure! More on that later!

For tonight's festivities (Girls' Night In, hosted by the fabulous Trina), I am bringing a primo combination of the two favorite food groups of women everywhere: chocolate and chocolate candy. Once completed, they will be cut into squares, making them Brown Square Food, which is always a crowd favorite.

They may a fantastic and efficient body enlarger, so enjoy freely if any part of your body needs to be made larger. Most effective in the lower body region.

Brrrrrr-ownies

adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours and from JumboEmpanadas.blogspot.com

5 T unsalted butter, cut into 5 pieces

3 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped

3 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped

2/3 cup sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

1/3 cup all purpose flour

1 cup (6 oz) York Peppermint Pattie Bites (or an equal weight of patties), chopped into bits

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325F. Line an 8-inch square baking pan with foil, butter the foil and place the pan on a baking sheet.

Set a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water. Put the butter in the bowl, top with the chopped chocolates and stir occasionally until the ingredients are just melted- you don’t want them to get so hot that the butter separates. Remove the bowl from the pan of water.

With a whisk, stir in the sugar. Don’t be concerned when your smooth mixture turns grainy. Whisk in the eggs, one by one. Add the vanilla and whisk vigorously to bring the batter together and give it a shine before gently stirring in the salt and flour; stir only until incorporated. Switch to a rubber spatula and fold in the peppermint pieces. Scrape the batter into the pan and smooth the top with the rubber spatula.

Bake the brownies for 30-33minutes, or until the top is dull and a thin knife inserted into the center comes out almost clean. (The tip of the knife may be a touch streaky.) Transfer the pan to a rack and cool to room temperature.

When they are completely cool, turn out onto a rack, peel away the foil and invert onto a cutting board. Cut into sixteen 2-inch squares.

Follow-up to Stupid Rye Bread

If you had a case of severe insomnia and wound up with a watering mouth after reading my last post, my apologies.
A recipe that takes that much time and effort to make is insane for someone like me. The end result: the dough is in the trash can outside my house. If I were on house arrest, I still would not want to make that bread. There is way too much effort and coordination involved. I could have driven to New York City, visited multiple friends, partied like a rock star for three days and ate countless sandwiches made on NYC Jewish Rye bread that I bought almost two hours away before that bread would have been ready for baking.
Outrageous I say!
I am left with two reminders of this bread effort:

1. the awful smell of rye yeast (think about the smell of the brewery on the Budweiser tour)
2. the fear that the pile of uncooked dough that i threw in the trashcan is going to continue to grow and take over my driveway. If, in this process, it envelopes my husband's motorcycle, well...we all make sacrifices, what can I say?

To counteract the smell and need for bread (because at this point, the bread machine is still sitting out on the counter, yelling: bake with me!), I will try my hand at French Bread.

adapted from: http://www.qis.net/~champion/bread/french.html

French Bread Ingredient List: 9 oz of water 2 teaspoons margarine or butter, softened 3.25 cups bread machine flour 1 tablespoon sugar 1.5 teaspoon salt 2.75 teaspoons regular active dry yeast OR 2.75 teaspoons bread machine or quick-acting active dry yeast Bake on French Bread Cycle

THIS is my kind of recipe!

Any crackpot, opps, i mean, healthy crockpot, suggestions?