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I think I am the last person to jump on this bandwagon, though this is certainly a good bandwagon to jump on. I have read so many accounts of bloggers making this famed Baked brownie, even one including thinly sliced bacon on top. (yes my friends, bacon.) For those of you who live under a rock, Baked is a well known bakery in Brooklyn who took the food world by storm with their critically acclaimed brownie recipe, among other delicious looking confections. I believe it was named best brownie or something of that ilk by America’s Test Kitchen, and it was one of Oprah’s favorite things. So you get the point.

I finally received the Baked: New Frontiers in Baking book for my birthday this year from Nick’s sister and her husband (thanks Peter and Andi ), and the first thing I made was of course the brownie.

I decided to wait to make these with my official brownie taste tester and lover of all things chocolate, Nick’s 8 year old son. I may have mentioned before that he is an infuriatingly picky eater, however, he will scarf down any brownie or chocolate baked good I can produce. And even better, he truly enjoys and wants to bake with me.

Even before these were baked, the rich chocolaty batter got 2 thumbs up. And really, how could this not be good, what with 2 sticks of butter, 11 ounces of chocolate, and 2 cups of sugar. Additionally, this was the first use of my batch of homemade vanilla extract, which I will post about eventually.

The verdict from the brownie expert: This was definitely in the top 3 brownies we have ever made and the rest of our family and friends really seemed to enjoy them. However, I will have to say that Dorie Greenspan’s French Brownies are still my favorite and, in my opinion, top these. Though the comparison may not be fair since these recipes yield two very different brownies.

The only problem that I had with this recipe was that I had to bake it almost double the amount of time called for until I got the moist crumb I was looking for. After the 30 minutes per the recipe, my tester was just plain moist and just not cooked at all in the middle. Not sure what happened here.

So does the Baked brownie deserve all the acclaim that it gets? I will say yes. It is a quality recipe that produces a very traditional tasting brownie. I would be interested to actually taste one from the bakery to see if mine differed much from one made by the masters.

You can find the recipe here or buy the book.

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie is Brownie Buttons which can be found on page 106-107 of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. They may just look like some normal mini brownies, but they are not. These fabulous bite size brownies are bursting with rich and bright flavors. The secret is…orange zest.

This is a fairly basic brownie recipe. Butter, sugar, chocolate, flour, eggs, and vanilla. Then Dorie adds a nice brightness with some orange zest, I used the zest of almost a whole orange so the orange flavor was very pronounced. Though she does say that the zest is optional, I think it is what sets these apart from just a regular brownie. I love the orange and chocolate combination, it reminds me of the chocolate cointreau souffles that Nick makes.

I made these to bring to the beach for a weekend vacation, as a treat for Nick’s 7 year old son. Since he is pretty much the pickiest eater on the planet (thanks mostly to the fact that he is continually fed junk and fast food when he is not with us) I opted out of the white chocolate topping. I actually wanted there to be a chance that he would eat these, and the orange zest was already worrying me. Good news, he did like them and had no complaints about the orange flavor. Since I was making them for little taste buds, I also decided to use semi sweet and milk chocolate instead of bittersweet.

I scanned the P&Q, but did not see anything about the weird thing that happened to my brownies. As I was removing them from the silicone pan, I realized that they had all caved in from the bottom. They were nice and fluffy on top, but the bottoms had sunk, but it was more like they were sucked in from above. What in the name of baking science went on in my muffin pan? Anyone???

Great TWD pick this week by Jayma of Two Scientists Experimenting in the Kitchen. Hey, maybe she can solve the case of my mysterious reverse cave in brownies.

I have a problem and that is that I really like to bake, and cook. So much so that I actually resent going to work because I feel like it is sucking up precious time that I would rather spend baking and blogging.

The main problem though, with this hobby of mine, is that baked goods usually equal large amounts of fat and calories. While I like the way large amounts of fat and calories taste, I dislike the way large amounts of fat and calories look in my unforgiving Summer wardrobe.

So, when I saw that Teanna over at Spork or Foon? made these so called healthy brownies a few weeks ago, I was excited. I am always looking for tasty sweet treats that aren’t the equivalent of an atomic bomb for your waistline. I have a vicious sweet tooth and I often do the most damage after dinner. I almost always crave something sweet at night, so having these around really helped satisfy my craving without obliterating whatever calorie deficit I achieved by eating well or going to the gym.

You can find the recipe here, which has 151 calories and .9 grams of fat per generous serving. They are made low fat by using egg whites, applesauce, and cocoa powder instead of whole eggs, butter/oil and chocolate.

The verdict on these: They were super easy and quick to make. They were also surprisingly moist and had a nice texture for a low fat brownie. I added some pecans on the top which gave the brownies a nice crunch. These are definitely a keeper. Though, if you decide to make them, please don’t expect a super chocolaty rich brownie. You will be disappointed. However, I think that these could stand to have a small addition of some dark chocolate to pump up the richness factor just a bit while still being bikini friendly.

As you know if you read this blog even just sporadically, I do a lot of baking, but most of it I have to give away. A serving of your average Dorie Greenspan recipe has anywhere from 10-30 grams of fat! That is just crazy. However, these have less than a gram of fat per serving, so these suckers were not going anywhere. I decided to wrap them up and throw them in the freezer so they would stay longer. I took one out a few days after baking them and was surprised to see that they were not frozen solid. They were ice cold yet soft and fudgy. A frozen brownie treat! I liked them even better chilled like this. I am not sure if it was just the time or the time spent in the freezer, but the chocolate and the coffee flavors were more pronounced the longer they sat. Though I am not quite sure why they stay soft in the freezer.

If you make these, I highly suggest freezing a few to snack on later. What a great Summer treat. A bunch of fresh fruit and a frozen brownie, maybe a small dollop of whipped cream. How good does that sound?

This week’s Craving Ellie in My Belly is Double Chocolate Pudding Pie and was chosen by Tessa of Handle the Heat. I was excited when Tessa picked this because I have not yet made a dessert for Craving Ellie in My Belly.

You can find Ellie Krieger’s recipe here or on page 280 of The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life.

I did not have time to make a whole pie, but I was able to fit in the pudding yesterday morning before work. I halved the recipe because I just did not need a whole pie’s worth of pudding. I split the pudding mixture between 4 ramekins so they would be fairly small servings.

I did not make any changes to the recipe, which includes low fat milk, cocoa powder, and 2 oz of bittersweet chocolate. Cornstarch thickens the chocolate mixture and gelatin helps it set.

This was super easy to make and it was really delicious. I took a couple of graham crackers and crushed them and sprinkled them on top. This had a lovely rich chocolate flavor and was creamy considering the low fat milk and small bit of actual chocolate. It was somewhat reminiscent of Jello chocolate pudding, but definitely better, and without whatever additives and preservatives are in the Jello snacks.

I mark this as a win in the Ellie Krieger column. It is a great lower fat dessert option and the pudding alone is a great little treat to make for yourself that you can feel good about eating. I hope everyone else liked this. I think as long as you were not expecting anything uber rich and decadent, this pudding will do the trick.

Check out the Craving Ellie in My Belly blogroll to see what the other ladies thought of this.

Okay, these were pretty delicious. Moist cinnamon cake, a surprise swirl of chocolate and cinnamon sugar in the middle, and chocolate ganache frosting to top it off. How could it be bad? The answer is, it can’t be bad.

The original recipe by Dorie Greenspan was for a whole cake, and you can find it on page 210-11 of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. However, in a effort to save some money on ingredients and to stop my waistline from expanding even more, I halved the recipe and made some cupcakes. I just could not bring myself to take out 10 tablespoons of butter for one cake this week.

I really love cinnamon, and this was the cinnamoniest cake I have ever made. The batter seemed pretty standard and it was simple to make, the only substitution I made was that I used low fat buttermilk instead of whole milk.

To make the cupcakes, I scooped a bit of batter into each cupcake cup, sprinkled the cinnamon, sugar, espresso powder mixture over the batter, then topped it with some more batter. The only tricky part was figuring out how many cupcake cups to fill halfway. I ended up having to abandon one half filled cup to fill up the others. I ended up getting 8 cupcakes out of a half recipe.

I let them cool overnight and frosted them the next day. The chocolate frosting couldn’t be easier to make. Chocolate + butter + double boiler = delicious ganache frosting. This frosting did set very nicely after about 2 hours. I was pleased.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I have had a bit of an upset tummy for the last few days so I only ended up eating 1/2 of a cupcake just to try it. They were great. Nick, Geoff, and our friend Nick of Macheesmo all gave them a thumbs up. The rest go off to work today with Nick.

I read on the P&Q that some people were not fans of the cinnamon chocolate combination. I suppose I don’t eat such a combination too often, but it was fabulous in this recipe. Just the right mix of comforting laid back buttery cake and chocolate decadence. However, I would totally eat this as a coffee cake with no frosting, and just the little secret punch of swirly chocolate in the middle.

Many thanks to Tracey of Tracey’s Culinary Adventures for picking this fab cake for all of us to make. Check out the Tuesdays with Dorie blogroll to see what the other bakers thought.

(How great is that swirl?)

Oh, chipster brownies.

This really is an ingenious idea. Chocolate chip cookie dough on top of brownie batter. Whoever originally came up with this must have been quite pleased with themselves.

I know some of my fellow TWD bakers had problems with this coming out over baked.

Fortunately, I did not have that problem. Unfortunately, mine were under baked.

I am not really sure what happened. I even had it in the oven with a pizza stone, which usually makes things cook quicker. In addition, when I checked it with a knife in multiple spots it appeared to be done. Then as it cooled, the top layer of cookie cracked and I could see mushy uncooked batter underneath.

Grrrr. I put it back in the oven for some more time, but it just wasn’t happening. The middle of the concoction was a mixture of undercooked cookie dough and brownie batter.

I cut it up to take a picture and then threw the rest away. Except for the chunk I gave to Geoff to take home, who cared not if the middle was still a bit raw. Thanks Geoff!

This was a fail. What a waste of butter and chocolate!!! Though the parts that were cooked through were delicious of course. How could it not be? I might make this again at some point.

These chipster brownies were chosen by Beth of Supplicious. If you want to see some successful executions of chipster brownies, check out the Tuesdays with Dorie blog roll.

Even though I had already made a pie for Nick for his birthday, I also wanted to make a layered birthday cake. Really, I had been wanting to make a layer cake for a while and his birthday was the perfect excuse.

I knew that I wanted to make a white or yellow cake, and that I wanted to dye the middle layer. (I would have preferred pink, but I went with blue since this was technically for Nick). I decided on a cake recipe that I saw at Food Loves Writing. Coincidentally, this recipe was actually originally printed in the Washington Post because it is a recipe from Restaurant Eve. Restaurant Eve is a well known restaurant in Alexandria, VA. I have never actually been there but have been reading many good things about it in various local publications for a few years now. So that, coupled with Shannalee’s review, made me confident that this cake would be delicious.

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This weeks Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was Tiramisu Cake and was chosen by Megan of My Baking Adventures. The original recipe can be found on page 266 of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or here.

So, Tiramisu Cake. Really, I could take or leave Tiramisu for the most part. I think by now most people know that Tiramisu means “pick me up” in Italian because it is often eaten in Italy as an afternoon snack that provides a nice jolt of caffeine from the espresso drenched ladyfingers. If you didn’t know that, well, now you do. Dorie Greenspan in her infinite wisdom has transformed this ubiquitous dessert into a cake.

I almost skipped this one, but at the last minute on Sunday night, I decided to go for it in the form of Tiramisu Cupcakes. My plan was to fill the cupcakes with the marscapone cream, reminiscent of the berry surprise cake we made for TWD a few months ago.

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I made this cake for Passover Seder at my parent’s house. It had to be flourless, ya know, the whole Passover thing.

Nick was the one who suggested the flourless chocolate cake and volunteered us to make it. He then went to pastry guru Joe Pastry to see what he had to say about such cakes. Mr. Pastry suggests using this recipe from Epicurious.

So, the night before our Seder, 11PM rolls around and there is no flourless chocolate cake. There is only me watching TV and Nick drinking scotch and playing online poker. Guess who ended up making this cake all by her lonesome, after having to harass Nick just to print out the recipe.

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I made these brownies for no good reason, except that I wanted some brownies. I seemed to be seeing brownies everywhere I turned and they were always saying “make me, Sara". So, I did.

There are tons of brownie recipes out there, and I wanted to try something new that I had never made. I found the original recipe on the Guittard Chocolate Company’s website, to which I made some changes. I renamed these little guys Truffle Brownie Bites, because they are so rich and decadent that they need to be eaten in bite size pieces.

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