Espresso Cheesecake Brownies

This is one of my delayed Tuesdays with Dorie posts. The dessert was initially to be posted September 1st, hosted by Melissa of Life in a Peanut Shell. It's a brownie-bottomed dessert, with espresso cheesecake on top, marbled with some of the brownie dough. Covered with a thin layer of sweetened sour cream, this dessert was a quick hit.

The individual portions are pretty easy to make, so putting the brownie together with cheesecake was a great idea; the finished product looks complex, but it's simple (though time-consuming). It tastes delicious, and goes great as an afternoon treat or a decadent dessert served along with some coffee.

After cutting into Dorie's suggested 16 portions, I tasted how rich they were, and decided to cut each portion into another half, making a total of 32 small bars. They were still devoured quickly at work, so I'm not sure how many people were just taking two anyways, but the slices still stood up to the cutting process after a quick chill in the refrigerator.

Recipe: Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan, pp. 104-105

Brownie Buttons

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Jayma of Two Scientists Experimenting in the Kitchen. The recipe was for these mini-sized brownie buttons - a perfect bite-sized dessert. Optionally added is orange zest (something I skipped on, wanting to savor the chocolate) and a simple icing (something I skipped on, being lazy).

These follow closely to a basic brownie recipe, except when they are baked, teaspoon-fulls are scooped into mini-sized muffin tins. These allow them to rise slightly to gain a short mini-muffin shape, yet keep their brownie flavor in full. You could expand the recipe easily from 18 of the buttons to an even dozen, and make your buttons a bit more texturally exciting if you wanted to add some chocolate chips or nuts - something I think I'll do next time, finding this recipe a little bit on the plain side.

I also need to take a bit more care from now on when heating the butter/chocolate mixture. After the chocolate and butter had melted, I continued heating it, wanting all the brown sugar granules to dissolve into solution. I think I ended up actually separating my chocolate mixture with too much heat, because when I pulled these out of the oven there was oil bubbling on the tops. After cooling down, everything looked normal, but the taste was just slightly off. Did anyone else have problems with their brown sugar melting?

Recipe: Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan, pp. 106-107

Tribute to Katherine Hepburn Brownies

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Lisa of Surviving Oz. It's a moist and dense brownie, with walnut pieces, chocolate chips, and a bit of coffee. It's fast to put together (all done in one bowl), and quick to bake up. Including preparation time, these brownies are out of the oven within an hour.

These brownies use very little flour (only 1/2 of a cup for the whole batch), a secret that Katherine Hepburn supposedly told to her friends. This makes the batch a bit thinner than usual, but guarantees they stay moist inside.

I added quite a bit more salt than the recipe called for, and was happy with the result. Ever since the Tuesdays with Dorie group baked World Peace Cookies, I've been wanting to add extra salt to something particularly chocolaty - and this was a perfect time to do so. I feel it adds more depth to the brownies, and enhances the flavors better. The coworkers were happy with this batch, and couldn't quite put their finger on what made them so good. I'm convinced it's the salt.

Recipe: Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan, pp. 96-97
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Chipster-Topped Brownies

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Beth of Supplicious. This is the first time I think I've had a late entry to TwD, but I'm just going to back-date it since technically they were done on Tuesday. Around midnight, that is. I tried to squeeze it in on time, but the brownies didn't cool fast enough for me to get a good cut before I went to sleep.


This recipe was definitely one for sweet teeth. What could be better than brownies covered with chocolate chip cookie dough, then all baked together? I ended up cutting this into very small pieces because it's so rich, and I'm sure it's going to take a while for this to be gotten through at work. This is definitely a lot of chocolately sweet goodness.

Back to why I ended up posting this a day late - I was gone on an awesome camping trip with a group of friends for the past 6 days. We drove from San Diego to Redding, then set up camp near Trinity Lake. Nine guys, a lot of booze, hiking, exploring, and of course great food. I came up with the menu and did most of the cooking (what can I say, it's my hobby). I was surprised at how well most of it turned out - chicken foil wraps, beef stew with dumplings, pizzas, chili, country-style breakfast skillets to name a few. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera with me for fear that something would happen to it, so I'm not going to be able to post up any of those recipes or the pictures of that food. Next time, I suppose.

Recipe: Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan, pp. 94-95

Quintuple Chocolate Brownies

I thought these holidays would be a great time to catch up on some of the Tuesdays with Dorie recipes I never got to try because I joined the group halfway through the year. This recipe was first made in early January.

If you want something extremely rich, this is the recipe for you. When I made it, I used dark chocolate, bittersweet chocolate, semisweet chocolate, and white chocolate. Originally made to form 16 squares, I cut it into 64 so they'd be more bite-sized (more appropriate for bringing to any holiday function). For the most part they held up fine, but some of the bites around the edges fell over - structural instability due to the nuts. Unfortunately I had to sacrifice those and eat them myself...darn.

Dorie suggests to serve these straight-up, but given how rich they are in even small portions, I couldn't imagine serving them without something to break up the chocolate, like vanilla ice cream. That's adding a lot more richness to the overall dish, so maybe you could make do with just a large glass of milk.

Recipe: Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan, pp. 98 - 100

French Chocolate Brownies

Another Tuesday rolls around, meaning it's time for another Tuesdays with Dorie post. This week's creation is French Chocolate Brownies (given, there's nothing particularly French about these brownies aside from the fact that they were first made by Dorie in France).

I consider any grocery run where I can stop into a Trader Joe's and walk out with a giant stick of chocolate to be a good grocery trip. I'm actually surprised that with all this baking I've been doing lately, I haven't had to buy any until now.

After chopping down the chocolate into fine pieces, it was time to use the bowl-on-pot double broiler method. For some reason, Dorie's wording scared me in this part - I've melted chocolate many times this way before, but she made it seem that if it stayed on for just a few seconds too long, you'd have burnt chocolate everywhere. It didn't give me any troubles, especially not after adding in the butter...I'm just not too sure why she worried about the chocolate burning so badly.

It was time to play with flames again as another batch of rum raisins were made. It's the first time I've heard of raisins being put into brownies, but it definitely came out as a benefit (and I don't even particularly like raisins - I don't not like them, I just don't love them). I added the 1 1/2 T. (homemade) dark rum that Dorie suggests, heated it over medium heat for a while, warned my roommates (who have never seen this before) to not singe their hair, lit the lighter, annnd...nothing. Damn, the heat pulled all the alcohol off already. Well, now I look stupid, and my roommates don't get to see raisins on fire with a blue flame. What to do? Well, add another couple tablespoons, and light it on fire right away, of course! Fortunately, this either didn't affect the brownies, or it may have made them even better - they taste fabulous, with barely a hint of the rum in the brownies themselves.

Baking and everything else via Dorie's recipe went fine. If I were to do this again, I'd have probably thrown some pecans on top, or inside the batter, just because I still have a bunch sitting around the house. After having thrown in the extra rum though, I didn't want to do too much to upset the baking gods. I don't know my boundaries yet!

I let the brownies cool overnight, then cut the mass into 16 2"x2" squares. After stealing a couple of them for a breakfast of champions, and letting my roommates do the same, I stored the rest in tupperware in the freezer - Dorie says they will be fine there for approximately 2 months, and I have a request from family to start storing some of these concoctions for family visits.

Recipe: Baking: From My Home to Yours, Dorie Greenspan, pp. 92-93