Brownie

For lunch with friends, I got a request for brownie. I made a huge pan, and topped it with a quick ganache of microwaved chocolate and cream. I originally wanted to pipe designs on the top of it with the ganache, but got lazy and ended up just wiping it back and forth as it poured out of the spoon.

Mini Frozen Cheesecakes

After making the pumpkin cake roll for Christmas dessert, I had some chocolate whipped cream leftover, on top of having some cream cheese mix left. On top of that, I also had a bunch of brownie crumbs, as it was very difficult to cut good pieces out of the brownie.

In an effort to use up all these leftovers (or at least most of them, as I still have brownie crumbs left), I made these mini frozen cheesecakes. The base is simply brownie crumbs pressed into the bottom of a silicone mini-cupcake mold. Then I folded the cream cheese, quark, and icing sugar mixture into chocolate whipped cream, and plopped it all on top of the bases.

The tops were flattened with the back of a buttering knife, and everything was put into the freezer. While a little hard to manage straight out of the freezer, as they were virtually impossible to scoop with spoons, these cheesecakes were enjoyable when softened but still cold.

Christmas '15: Brownie with Cream Cheese Pattern

This year for Christmas presents, I decided to bake a big batch of brownie and cut it up into squares to pack up. I had originally planned to have 2 different brownies and some kind of gingerbread-like bars in there as well, but due to time constraints, I had to settle with just the one.

For the brownie, I used a double batch of the classic egg-free recipe I have been using. To make it a little more interesting, at least to the eye, I topped it with a pattern of cream cheese, quark, and icing sugar mix. The quark helped make the cream cheese more fluid, and I had some left from before that needed using up. The pattern was made by drawing lines of cream cheese mix over the top of the batter, then running a chopstick in opposite directions.

The wonderful image I had in mind for nice, even squares went out the window the moment I cut into it after cooling and refrigerating it a couple of hours. The no-crust parts were crumbling and falling every which way. Luckily, I managed to somehow cut 30 squares that were more or less intact, and to package them in little bags, each piece sitting on its own square of baking paper. Unfortunately, in some cases, the pattern did not really survive the cutting and packaging.

Marbled Banana Brownie Wannabe

The original title for this post was going to be "marbled peanut butter and chocolate banana brownie wannabe," but since that is very long-winded, let's settle for the short version.

A week or two ago, my cousin L bought a bunch of bananas. As usual, they sat in the fruit basket getting riper and riper, until there was nothing left to do with them but to bake them. I am still not in the mood for banana bread (don't ask me why), so I thought I'd make another banana brownie. Then L saw the Facebook post from someone in the building saying they had leftover peanut butter brownie, and so she asked me if I could make it peanut butter this time.

To make things more difficult for myself, I thought I'd tackle a marbled peanut butter chocolate one. I simply made half of a batch of chocolate brownie batter (using half of the recipe in the link above), and half of a batch of an experimental peanut butter variant, which simply used 100 g of creamy peanut butter instead of the chocolate. Then I dolloped it progressively, alternating batters, into my loaf pan, and swirled it all with a knife.

Although the texture was amazingly soft and great to eat, it made it very difficult to cut the loaf and get decent slices that didn't collapse and break every which way. I'm still debating whether it's worth trying to fix that and possibly sacrifice the texture. To be determined in the future, I guess.

Banana Brownie

For a hallway dinner, I figured I should try and do something with the bananas I had left in the fruit basket. I wasn't really in the mood for banana bread, though, so I thought I would try and tweak my brownie recipe into one that would incorporate bananas.

I used mashed bananas instead of the applesauce, and added whatever chocolate I had left in my baking ingredients storage (which turned out to be mostly dark chocolate, with a small bit of white chocolate chips).

Dipping the bottom of the 12 banana slices in some flour kept them from sinking during the baking process. I also sprinkled some granulated cane sugar on top of the slices so that they would caramelize a bit, as well as to keep them from drying out.

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RECIPE

  Ingredients (for a loaf pan)

• 3/4 cup (94 g) flour
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• less than 1/4 cup (~30 g) cane sugar
• 1 1/2 (~70 g) mashed banana
• 1 packet vanilla sugar
• 3 tbs hot water
• pinch of instant decaf/coffee
• 200 g chocolate
• 3 tbs (28 g) butter
• 1/2 banana, for topping

  Procedure

1. Preheat oven 180°C. 
2. Oil and flour a loaf pan.
3. Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a bowl, and set aside.
4. In a microwaveable bowl, put chopped chocolate and butter. Melt 30 seconds at a time in a microwave until the chocolate appears partly melted. Stir until smooth.
5. In a large mixing bowl, whisk mashed banana, vanilla sugar, and sugar until melted.
6. Add hot water and instant decaf/coffee.
7. Add in the melted chocolate and mix well.
8. Fold in the dry ingredients.
9. Pour into pan. Slice the half banana, and dip one side in some flour before putting on top of the batter. Sprinkle some sugar on top of each slice.
10. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out dry.
11. Cool and enjoy with some ice cream or whipped cream (or both)~

Nutty Brownies

I was going to visit some family friends. When I go, I usually bring some baked goods. At a loss as to which recipe to use, my mom suggested that I bake brownies again, as those friends love chocolate. I wanted to be able to cut through the sweetness a bit more, though.

Instead of using water, I put in a couple of tablespoons of decaffeinated coffee (because I did not want to keep them awake at night from eating brownies), and topped them with nuts. I made a small bunch of cupcake-sized ones to give away, and made another batch into a large, round brownie to share with my family.

Although I had added some coffee flavor in, I had also reduced the amount of sugar, because the last time, I had deemed it a bit too sweet. My nut preference would have been walnuts, but since I did not have any on hand, almonds and cashews had to suffice. This time, I did refrigerate the cake, which gave it a more fudgy texture than when not refrigerated.

The recipe can be found HERE.

Eggless Brownies

I think #5 on my brother's dessert wishlist (briefly mentioned in my previous post) was brownies. I had never made brownies before, but hey, it was time to try! I came across this recipe that looked awesome, and I just happened to have leftover applesauce from making the apple tart.

Having anticipated that I would be baking at least some kind of chocolate dessert, I had made sure to buy chocolate when I went to buy the apples for the tart.

These smelled heavenly while baking and cooling. It was a little difficult to go to sleep after (it was approximately 12:30 am by the time I was done with baking and cleaning up). I baked them in my little silicone cupcake molds, as I did not have baking paper with which to line a pan. I made 2 little packages of 3 cup-brownies each to give to my brother and his traveling companion. Due to lack of time, however, I did not refrigerate them as required in the original recipe.

A recipe that I will definitely make again!

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BROWNIES RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 3 tbs (~28 g) butter
• 1 1/2 up (~265 g) chocolate
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tbs hot water
• vanilla

  Procedure

1. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
2. Melt chocolate and butter until chocolate appears partly melted. Mix until smooth.
3. In a large mixing bowl, combine applesauce and sugar. Mix until sugar has dissolved.
4. Mix in hot water and vanilla.
5. Add chocolate mix, and mix well.
6. Fold in dry ingredients with a spatula.
7. Bake 180°C for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out dry.
8. Refrigerate 1 hour before cutting.