Brownies!

Brownies

½ C Unsalted butter
10 oz chocolate chips/ chunks- semi-sweet or bittersweet or both
¾ C Brown sugar
1 tsp Vanilla
2 eggs
¾ C AP flour
1 Tbs unsweetened cocoa powder
½ tsp. Salt
¼ tsp baking powder

-Preheat oven to 350

-Butter and flour a 9” square pan

-Melt butter and 6 oz of the chocolate in a medium/lg bowl in the microwave- 30 seconds at a time, stirring between each go.
-Cool to lukewarm
-While waiting, whisk or sift together flour, cocoa, salt, and baking powder in another bowl
-Stir the sugar and vanilla into the chocolate/butter mixture
-Add eggs to chocolate/butter mixture 1 at a time, mixing well between each addition, then stirring/beating until the batter is glossy and smooth
-Stir in flour mixture
-Stir in remaining 4oz of chocolate

-Bake for 20-30 minutes, until a knife or toothpick or what-not barely comes out clean. Cool on a rack before cutting and serving.

*If you want to double the recipe, just use a 9” by 13” pan to bake it in and give it a bit longer, all will be well!!!
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Tea and Cakes for a Rainy Day

It's a rare cloudy day here in Colorado, so I thought I'd share my recipes for Chai tea and lemon bars. I've seen some key limes in the stores lately, and for 10 for $1 it's a great excuse to make something tasty! They are a pain in the ass to juice, but well worth it! Look for limes with thin skins that give when you squeeze them to maximize your juice yield.

Enjoy!

Marcie’s Yogi Tea (Chai)

1 Tbs Ground Cardamom
1 tsp Ground Cloves
1 or 2 inches of Cinnamon Stick
1 Tbs Fennel Seed
1 Tbs Fresh Ginger (peeled and grated)
Sugar or honey to taste (I use about ¼ C sugar, but I know others use upwards of a cup so really, to taste!)
2 Tbs Loose tea or about 6 tea bags (I use a Ceylon mix, so black)
2 Cups Milk (2%, or whatever you have)
1 Cup Water

Boil Everything together in a pot, simmering for about 5 minutes. Strain and pour into cups. Serves about 4, and will store well in the fridge for about a week- morning iced chai!


Grampa’s Lemon Bars

For Crust:
1 C Butter
½ C Powdered Sugar
½ tsp Salt
2 C Flour

For Filling:
4 Eggs
1 ¾ C Sugar
½ tsp Baking Powder
¼ C Flour
¼ C Lemon or Key Lime juice (some pulp okay)
Finely chopped/ grated zest from 1 lemon (~ 1 Tbs)

Preheat oven to 350

Cream the butter, powdered sugar, and salt in a medium bowl. Add the flour and mix until combined. Press the dough into a 9”x13” brownie pan and poke holes all over it with a fork. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until just starting to get golden.

While the crust bakes, beat the eggs with a fork or a whisk, then add in the sugar, baking powder, flour, lemon, and lemon zest.

Pour the filling over the lightly golden crust and bake for another 20-25 minutes, until the topping is just firm.

Sift some powdered sugar on top and enjoy!

Weird Dreams, Chocolate Cherry Bread Pudding

Last night I dreamed I was at Tanya's and she had made this two-layer shortcake, strawberry jell-o and cool whip creation that tasted really funky, but it was a huge hit and she'd won some sort of gourmet prize for it.

Anyhow... I've been busy with school starting back up and riding a new horse at the rescue, so sorry about the lack of posts! The archiving is on hold while I figure out how to keep my head from exploding during cell biology lecture. But I did make a nice bread pudding yesterday, so I'll share that.

I had made some chocolate cupcakes out of a box and was disappointed by how lame they came out (and my lack of frosting). But I still wanted chocolate deliciousness so I decided to give this a try.

Breakfast of Champions

I whisked up 6 eggs and a little over a cup of heavy cream, added some almond extract (maybe 1/2 tsp) and some vanilla (about 1 tsp) and a quarter cup of sugar. Then I tore up the 16 remaining cupcakes (Mike apparently ate 2) and stirred them in along with about a cup of chocolate chips and a can of sweet cherries, drained. Not maraschinos, not pie filling, just canned cherries I found in the canned fruit section. The cupcakes pretty much completely crumbled apart, but it came out well so don't worry about it. If you don't have enough egg/cream mix to soak up all the cupcake crumbs you can stir in a little more cream (hoorah death by dairy fat!).

I greased a 9"x9" glass pan and poured in the mixture, which fit perfectly. Remember that it won't rise a whole lot and won't get runny, so it's safe to have a small mounded portion over the top of the pan. I baked this concoction at 350 for about 45 minutes, until a knife stuck in the middle came out with only a few fine crumbs stuck to it and the edges were starting to pull away from the sides of the pan.

I highly recommend serving a nice warm square of this pudding with a scoop of ice cream on top.

My Favorite Cookies- the first recipe!

So, let me know how the format works...
Let's all make sure to label our posts with the recipe type (cookie), main ingredients/theme (chocolate chip) and meal type (dessert) so they're easy to search for later on.

Enjoy!

Tahoe-Tested Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 Cup (2 sticks) Unsalted Butter, at room temp.
1 Cup Brown Sugar
½ Cup White Sugar
2 Lg. Eggs
1 ½ tsp. Vanilla Extract
¼ tsp. Allspice (or nutmeg, or cloves, or ½ tsp cinnamon)
2 ¼ Cups A.P. Flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
½ tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Salt
1 ½ C Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips


Combine Flour, baking powder and soda, and salt in a medium bowl and whisk together (or sift). Set aside.

Cream butter and sugars on medium-high speed (standing mixer works best, but hand-held is fine and melting the butter and using a spoon works okay for dorm situations etc. but the cookies will be a little tougher) about 3 minutes or until light and creamy looking. You may need to scrape down the bowl a few times to get it all mixed
Add the eggs, one at a time, beating until just combined (about 30 secs) and scraping down the bowl after each one. Add vanilla and spice and beat another 30 seconds, until combined.

Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture, either by hand or with the mixer on low, scraping down as needed. Stir in the chocolate chips, then chill dough at least one hour, until firm.

Preheat Oven to 325 F.
Form dough into ~ 1” balls, don’t make them too big now, and place about an inch apart on a cookie sheet. You don’t need to grease the sheet, but I recommend using parchment paper if your sheets are older or you often have trouble with things sticking to them. Replace remaining dough in fridge.

Bake cookies about 10 minutes, until golden and set but still very soft looking. Let cool on sheet for a couple minutes, then remove them to a rack to cool. Repeat with remaining dough. Store in a sealed container or baggy.

*I often make this, cook a half dozen, then form the rest of the dough into balls and freeze it for later! Place the balls on plates and freeze a couple hours before tossing them all into a freezer bag and sealing it tightly. This way they won’t all stick together. When you want cookies, take out as many balls of dough as you want and cook them at 350 for 12-15 minutes, they come out wonderfully and then you don’t have three dozen cookies at once, tempting you with their deliciousness ☺