Exquisite Turmoil

Seemingly (if Dan tells the truth) the cookies were a hit at work, so I decided to tackle some brownies tonight to send with him tomorrow. Here’s the recipe:

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 4 oz unsweetened chocolate
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup flour (all purpose or baking, I prefer baking)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup chopped pecans

I suppose you could use walnuts or some other nut, but I decided to use up those extra pecans from the cookies yesterday ^_^ Also, I’d like to note that if you look closely in the butter section you can find “European Butter” which is 83% butterfat, as opposed to 80% on most butters. It doesn’t seem like a big difference, but you’ll find that it gives your baked goods a much creamier and crisper quality. I also prefer to use unsalted butter so that you have total control over the amount of salt going into your recipe.

In any case, melt 1/2 cup of the butter with the chocolate — either over a double boiler or just in the microwave.. about two minutes in the microwave will do it, but check it earlier to avoid burning the butter if you’ve got an uber microwave.

Mix the remaining 1/2 cup of butter with the sugar and vanilla (speed 2 for 30 seconds, then speed 6 for two minutes, or until it looks like all of the sugar is incorporated). Switch to speed 4 and add your eggs one at a time, waiting to introduce the next egg until the previous one is well blended. By this point your mixture should be nice and creamy. Turn off the blender, scrape the bowl and add the chocolate. Mix at 2 for around 30 seconds and then add the rest of the ingredients. Scrape the bowl down, set it to stir speed, and mix for another 30 seconds or so.

Pour it into a greased 13×9 and bake for 45 minutes at 350. Cool on a wire rack (still in the pan, of course), cut and enjoy!

We also made some pirogies tonight, but I’m not going to post that recipe since I wasn’t quite satisfied with it. The dough was too thick. It may be that it could be rolled thinner (or pressed once I get the flat pasta attachment <3<3) but by hand I don’t think I could have gotten it much thinner, which leads me to believe that the dough recipe was not quite right (especially since ancient Polish women have to be able to do it ^_^).

The filling was good — onions, mashed potatoes and Gorgonzola. I also made a creamy onion / Gorgonzola / butter sauce to pour over the top which was very good. I’m sure I’ll be attempting pirogies again soon and once the recipe is perfected I’ll post it on up here. Not that I think anyone is coming here looking for my recipes, but hey.. I have to have something to blog about!

I don’t think I mentioned it already, but Dan picked me up a KitchenAid on Black Friday for $129 (best husband ever, went out at 4:30 am so we wouldn’t miss the sales!) and I finally got a chance to use it today! I say finally like from Friday to Monday is such a long time which, of course, it isn’t. But still, I’m excited! We were sitting around painting tonight (also of course :p) when the monster children decided to break open the Oreos and tempt me greatly. I managed to abstain until after they went to bed and finally I couldn’t wait any longer. Oreos didn’t seem like they would do the trick, however, so I decided to bake up some fresh chocolate chip cookies. I sent Dan out to the store to pick up a few ingredients (namely the chocolate chips.. can’t have chocolate chip cookies without chocolate chips) and got to baking! The KitchenAid is sooo wonderful. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to make cookies from scratch, but the dough is not easy to mix by hand, and my dinky little hand mixer can’t manage it at all. The KitchenAid just powered right through it, however, and mixed up in 30 seconds what would have taken me (or Dan, more likely, since I am lazy) at least five minutes.

In any case, the cookies were delicious, and I’m sending the leftover with Dan to work tomorrow so that he can share them with his friends and I won’t be tempted to eat them all ^_^ For anyone who cares, here is the recipe.

• 3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg
• 1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 6 oz chocolate chips (I like bittersweet dark, but milk is fine)
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Preheat the oven to 375.

Mix up the sugars, margarine and shortening in a bowl and beat it until it’s nice and fluffy.. with the KitchenAid I did it on speed 2 for about 45 seconds. Add in the vanilla and the egg and blend it well (speed 4, less than a minute). Add the flour, baking soda and salt and beat (speed 4, two minutes). Toss in the chocolate chips and nuts and blend on the lowest setting for about two seconds.

Roll’em into cute little balls (I don’t know why, but I’ve always preferred to drop cookie dough with my hands rather than a measuring spoon, not that it makes them taste any better) and bake them for 8-10 minutes until they look tasty and delicious. Pull’em out of the oven, let’em sit on the tray for about a minute them scoop them off and enjoy. Technically they should go from the tray to a wire rack to cool some more but I can never resist eating them right away.

Off of the cookie note, I finished painting up the new skink..

Soooo…. which skink do I go with? Oh yeah, lots more pictures of the black skink in the gallery, of course (accessible by the Pictures link listed under ‘Pages’).