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If you are coming here expecting to find Carrot, Green Apple & Mint Salad, well, it’s not here. Even though this week’s Craving Ellie recipe was chosen by one of my favorite bloggers (A Singleton in the Kitchen), who also happens to live in the same city as me, this salad just wasn’t our thing. My apologies to Jessica - please don’t look me up and beat me, but please look me up and bring me some of your delicious looking baked goods, ribbons and all!

I have been doing A LOT of cooking lately, and not so much baking, so I decided to do a rewind this week and make Ellie’s Chocolate Cherry Almond Biscotti. If you are unfamiliar, biscotti are Italian cookies and their name means “baked twice". You bake the dough the first time in a log, then you cool it, slice it and bake the slices a second time to dry them out. The longer they bake the second time, the harder the cookies will be. They are the perfect mate to a nice hot cup of coffee.

These were easy to make. The dough is a very stiff and sticky cookie dough. The only sort of issue I had was that after the first baking of 25 minutes they were still very raw in the middle. I did not realize this until I sliced them, so I just had to do a longer bake the second time. I am really not sure if it was supposed to be that way or not, but it worked out in the end.

Overall these biscotti were pretty good, I enjoyed them even more after they had sat for a day. I like that they weren’t rock hard and the combo of chocolate, cherries, and almonds is always delicious. If I make them again I would add more cherries, decrease the chocolate, and put in some almond extract to get more of an almond flavor.

I am not really sure what the fat and calories are in a normal biscotti, but these babies have 10 grams of fat and 230 calories per cookie. So they are not exactly guilt free (at least in my mind), but they are certainly not a diet buster either. And they are made with half whole wheat pastry flour so the calories are not totally empty.

You can find the recipe for these cookies here.

Here is my log. I measured this to be 10 x 3, so I don’t think my under doneness had to do with the size. You can see how chock full of delicious goodness it is:

Here it is out of the oven:

Semi raw biscotti. I think I had to bake them for another 25 minutes, and I tested them this time with a cake tester!

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.

These are Dorie Greenspan’s Tribute to Katherine Hepburn brownies. They are the best brownies ever. They are everything I think a brownie should be - rich and chocolaty, moist, fudgy, and just a bit ooey gooey. They are almost flourless and have no rising agent, so they are thin and dense. They are worth the calories and fat.

This Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was chosen by Lisa of Surviving Oz. You can find the recipe on her site or on page 96-97 of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

I used pecans in my brownies, and surprisingly I really loved them. I am generally not a nut in my brownie kind of gal, but they worked really well here. They gave a bit of crunch in the midst of the soft moist chocolate. I also enjoyed both the coffee (I used instant espresso granules) and the cinnamon flavors that Dorie included. I don’t think that either were over powering, but both were pleasantly noticeable.

I baked these in a glass pyrex square pan at 325F for about 31 minutes, and luckily I had no doneness issues. I know some bakers decrease the oven temperature by 25 degrees when using glass pans. I suspect that because I had a pizza stone in the oven while I was baking these, they cooked quicker throughout and therefore did not plague me with overcooked edges and a raw center.

I let these guys cool for about an hour before I de-paned them and began cutting, but they were still too soft to cut. How delicous does that melty chocolate look:

I put them in the fridge overnight so I wouldn’t destroy them in the cutting process. The next morning I cut them while they were cold and then let them sit at room temperature for the whole day before trying one after dinner. I agree with Dorie that these are best served at room temperature.

These were so good. When things are so good, I tend to laugh in joy and giddiness while eating. I was definitely giggling while eating my brownie. They are too good to stay in the house, they will be removed from the premises tomorrow. Better to fatten up our co-workers than us.

The bottom line is if you love brownies and/or are looking for a knock out chocolate brownie recipe, you should make these immediately. I think they will replace my current go-to triple chocolate brownie recipe.

I am sure my fellow TWD bakers made some great additions and accompaniments to these brownies, so check out the blogroll to see for yourself.

This weeks Craving Ellie in My Belly was chosen by Natalie of What’s for Supper? She chose Breakfast Cookies. Any recipe that wants me to eat a cookie for breakfast is worth a try in my book.

These are basically a healthy cookie muffin cross breed. They are soft and cakey cookies made with whole wheat pastry flour, rolled oats, bran cereal, canola oil, pureed carrot baby food, sugar, and a small bit of butter. Sound appealing yet? How about if we flavor them with a generous amount of cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla and add some walnuts and raisins? (Don’t skimp on flavorings, they are very necessary.)

Truth be told, I was actually intrigued by this recipe and excited to try it. Since I am not an early riser (at all) we don’t do hot or prepared breakfasts during the week. However, I do always have some kind of muffin in the freezer that we can take out in the morning and eat. So I was pleased to see this picked by Natalie so I could try a breakfast alternative.

I did make some substitutions/changes:
1. I did not use the bran cereal flakes, instead I used an equal amount of oats
2. Instead of pureed carrot baby food I used some applesauce.
3. I used dried cherries instead of raisins. I am currently slightly obsessed with dried tart cherries.

Overall, these were not bad. As I already alluded, I felt that the cinnamon and nutmeg really carried these things flavor wise. I have only eaten one so far, the rest are in the freezer for quick breakfasts. I think I may try heating one up in the microwave for like 30 seconds and spreading some jam or peanut butter on it. Or maybe I’ll go crazy and do jam AND peanut butter.

I am not sure if I would make these again. Since Nick really can’t eat whole wheat, that means that I would have to make these for myself and something else for him. In addition, I think I still prefer a muffin over these cookies.

I do think that these cookies have some potential for playing around and adjusting to personal preference. So I would encourage you to read the recipe and think about how you could make it to suit you. You could also read the Food Network reviews for this recipe for some ideas. I also think that there is additional room to make these cookies even healthier by changing out the sugars for agave nectar, maybe adding some flax seed. I am really interested to see what my other Craving Ellie ladies did with their cookies. Perhaps I will be inspired by them to make another batch.

You can find the full recipe for these cookies here.

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?

You know what? I don’t really like blondies. I am not sure why.

Does that make me strange?

I don’t dislike them, but I could take or leave a blondie any day. Though I do find their chocolaty cousin the brownie quite irresistible.

I made these blondies a few weekends ago on a whim. Nick had been asking for some, and I was bored.

I made Dorie Greenspan’s Chewy Chunky Blondies, which is on page 109 of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

They were good. Very chewy and buttery, with lots of chunky add-ins. Definitely perfect with a cold glass of milk.

Here is how I know that I don’t really care for a blondie. I had these sitting around the house for a few days before they went into Nick’s office for the vultures to finish them off, and I did not pick at them or guiltily eat one every time I walked by tupperware. I only ate about 1 1/2 blondies total. I’ll repeat that they were in the house for DAYS. This is unheard of. I have no will power when it comes to buttery desserts.

However, this is nothing against this recipe. Nick really liked it and they got great reviews from his co-workers. I would say if you like blondies and/or chewy cookie bars, you should absolutely try these.

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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.

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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I baked these cookies this past weekend with my adorable 7 year old kind of step son Joey. This child is a chocolate fiend and he would live on candy if we allowed it.

He originally wanted to bake a cake but we did not have much time. So I went in search of a quick chocolate chip cookie recipe. I was looking for a recipe where I did not have to wait for the butter to soften, and I found a perfect one on Serious Eats.

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