Cooking With Deb

Some years ago, I don't remember how many, my mother sent me a box of recipes.

She'd gotten around to cleaning out her recipe boxes, first of all. Then, she went through her mother's recipes for ones she wanted to save. Finally, she sorted through stacks of recipes from my dad's sisters, given to her over the years and dumped into a drawer. When she was done sorting, she sent what she didn't want to me.

There are hundreds here. I have no idea how old some of these are, but they reflect American Midwestern cooking tastes. The box has sat, unused, in the home office for many years. I was going to integrate these with the recipes I save but it would be such a daunting task, I put it off in favor of doing most anything else.

I like to cook, but the realities of my life are that cooking is not something I do when I get home from work. My stamina is gone so whatever supper is must be something reasonably quick. That doesn't favor good food; let's be honest. Ice cream, crackers, peanut butter sandwiches, dry cereal, tend to be staples of dinner. And a diet like that is not good for me. My efforts to reform my diet fall apart simply because I'm tired.

Then one day, I had an idea. What if I cooked one new recipe a week? I could dive into mom's box and make one new thing. I grabbed a handful and counted recipes, using the date numerator. When I got to #28, I read it to see whether it was something I'd make. It was a fruit cocktail sauce to serve warm with ham. Nope. Counted again and got a recipe for green beans with bacon. You won't find me ever making green beans. I cannot stand them. The next batch of counting yielded this.

Well, this was something I would eat. Plus, I had most of the ingredients. I needed a pastry shell, the sweetened condensed milk and the biscuit mix. Turns out I also needed nuts because all I have, right now, are almonds, but, at the time I made this, I thought I had walnuts.

It's quick to make, but it makes a lot of batter.

The regular pie shell couldn't hold all of it. If I make this again, I should try a deep dish shell. The excess, I put in a greased glass dish and baked with the pie.

The pie bakes for 45 minutes. I had no idea how long to cook this so I checked every 10 minutes. At 20 minutes, I pulled it from the oven. I should have left it bake for another 10 minutes. While set, it wasn't completely baked and I wound up eating these with a spoon, not that there's anything wrong with brownie consumption via spoon. The pie came out, cooked through, at 45 minutes.

The smell in my house of brownies baking was heavenly.

It cut well. The brownie had a nice crust to it. You bake the shell first, add the batter and bake again. I had concerns the shell would be overdone, but it wasn't.

It's very rich. The chocoholic that I am can only eat one piece a day. The batter was scrumptious and I wonder how long it would keep to be used as an ice cream topping. Perhaps that's something for a party. I am not ashamed to confess I licked that bowl clean. The addition of whipped cream was a nice touch, but I wish I had vanilla ice cream. THAT would have been outstanding with a slice of pie.

So, the first recipe in this idea was a success. That got me thinking about the box I have in the home office with all the recipes I've saved over 35+ years. There was a teen magazine when I was growing up, called Ingenue. They gave tips on health and beauty, but also on homemaking and budgeting and living on your own. They were rather ahead of their time back then, not assuming you were going to find a guy and get married and jump into the Ladies Home Journal set. I started collecting recipes back then. I have a couple I still make.

When I moved, the stash went with me. Eventually, the addition of other cooking magazines necessitated a filing system for what I was saving. Enter "the box and folder" system.

It started out okay. Label the manilla envelopes with categories and then drop the recipe into that folder. Once a month, grab a folder and read through the recipes, picking a few to try. Eventually, I took to just ripping out the pages and tossing them in the box. I don't remember the last time I actually sorted recipes into the folders. Some of the folders were 25  years old and disintegrating at the edges. What if I combined the two boxes?

That's what I did. I happened to have a box the right size for the cut ones. My saved ones are on the bottom, with mom's saved ones on the top.

All the single sheets are in a stack, to be gone through, assessed, and the recipe I actually want to try cut out and added to the box. The former box was thoroughly examined but the sides are too high to lie down and rest one's chin on so that box has been deemed "recyclable". The old file folders were sniffed but Pilchard decided she didn't want to lie on those. Her current box is to the right. All the folders have been recycled.

I think this will be a lot of fun. I reduced a mess to at least some containment. I need to buy a cake mix for next week's recipe. I expect there will be quite a few 'what the...' upcoming but that's part of the excitement of doing this. It's going to be great exploring what I, my mother, my grandmother and my aunts thought was so good 20-odd years ago that we saved a recipe. Doing this has already got me cooking supper, too. That alone is a victory.

Beverage:  Assam tea

Deb

Mothers Day Brownies

Three weeks ago, NPR had, on their Facebook feed, a recipe for Decadent Chocolate Brownies. The recipe contained ingredients I had on hand, meaning no extra trip to the store. That's always a good thing. I did buy ice cream when I first encountered the recipe, in anticipation of making brownies but didn't make them until today.

It was different. First you had to line a loaf pan with parchment paper.

Usually, if you use parchment paper, you also grease the paper. This recipe didn't have you do that. My paper is old. It's been around awhile, but it was still good to use.

I didn't realize this was a loaf pan size amount. That should have been a clue that these weren't your average brownies. I gathered all the ingredients and started baking. Step 2 was to melt semi-sweet chocolate chips and butter.

This is what the directions told you to do. Put a glass bowl over simmering water in a pot. It was nice that they didn't assume everyone has a double boiler. I used to have one but I think Carole took the bottom part of it years ago when she moved west. You wind up adding the rest of the ingredients to the melted chocolate so these directions keep the amount of dishes to a minimum.

It takes a bit to get it going but once the chocolate starts to melt, you need to continually stir it to keep it from burning. Mmmmmm. Melted chocolate.

Once the chocolate is melted, you add the other ingredients, one at a time. The recipe called for white and brown sugar. My brown sugar could have been used to pound nails. A quick internet search and I had soft brown sugar. I've put it in an air tight container but the best thing would be to use it up within a month of purchase. Yeah, well, that's probably not going to happen, so I'll go with the air tight container.

This gets poured into the prepared pan.

It's a lovely glossy brown, which is what it should look like, but it's not very much. The loaf is put in the oven for 35 minutes. The house begins to smell heavenly.

I thought, although my knowledge of brownies told me otherwise, the batter might rise so what I put in the pan might get bigger. It didn't. I have a loaf of brownies. They are cooled for a half-hour and then here it gets weird. You put them in the fridge and chill them further 2 hours. The time at the top of the recipe is not accurate for preparation. It says 45 minutes when that's not even close when you consider 30 minutes to bake and 30 minutes to cool BEFORE sticking them in the fridge. I was beginning to wonder about these.

After 2 hours, I took the loaf out of the fridge and dumped it on the counter, peeling off the paper.

It's a loaf, of baked brownie batter, a loaf. The ends and sides were dry and hard to the touch. I carved off an end piece.

The hunk is soft and gooey on the inside but dry and hard on the sides. I wound up slicing the ends off because I couldn't gnaw through them.

Perhaps raccoons would appreciate these, but I haven't seen a raccoon since last fall so I don't think I want to tempt them back. I was very disappointed by this because it's a half-inch of brownie no one can eat.

How does it taste? Well, if you can overlook the dry, crusty, exceptionally hard ends, they aren't bad. I warmed up a chunk and it went very well with vanilla ice cream. But, the bottom line is this is an awful recipe.

I saved the rest of the loaf and will see how it fares. I put it in a freezer bag and stuck the bag in the fridge. Will it dry out quickly?

I have other brownie recipes with a couple more ingredients or a few more steps that make better brownies and more of them. I am certain you can type "Brownie recipe" into any search engine and get a recipe that even a beginner can make. The ones made with cocoa can be just as rich as melting chocolate and butter together. This was a huge disappointment.

Beverage:  English Breakfast tea

Deb

Comfort Food

It's kind of overused to call this a "brutal" winter. At least we don't have the snow here that we did last year. It's just cold. Cold I can deal with, especially when I can make comfort food.

It was on sale for $1.50 a box. I think that comes very close to the cost of making them from scratch. What could be more comforting than warm brownies on a cold winter night.

Everything gets dumped into one bowl.

As advertised, the mix comes with chocolate pieces. Some were chunks and some were chips. There is a pouch of fudge which is added to the batter. You add an egg, 1/2 cup of oil and 3 tablespoons of water.

I found it humorous that the directions tell you to beat the batter for 50 strokes. Usually, it says "beat until moist". I guess they found that giving people a set number of strokes results in a more consistent product. The bottom of the pan is greased and the batter poured into the prepared pan. You bake the brownies at 350 for 35 to 37 minutes.

While they are baking, lick the bowl. It could be argued that one of the reasons I bake is to eat the batter. You wouldn't be completely wrong, but I think the combination of batter and baked good is best.

They look like brownies should look. There is a thin cracked crust and they rose just a bit. My pan is 8.5 by 6.5 so I got thick brownies. If you use a 9x9 pan, which the box says can be used, they would be thin. I guess it's all in how you like your brownies.

I cut the pan into quarters. I discovered that the 37 minutes allotted was not enough. The bottom was still batter. So, I was making fries at the time and stuck the pan back in the 450 oven for another 10 minutes. That cooked them all the way through. If I do this again, I'll go for 40-45 minutes.

They smelled wonderful. The batter tasted good. I can't call it "great" because it did taste somewhat artificial. There is a difference in taste when you make it on your own than when it comes from a box due to food preservation laws. You'd think it would just be chocolate pieces, cocoa, flour and sugar, but there was something else. Probably anti-clumping additives. It wasn't a bad taste, but it didn't taste like brownies composed of flour, sugar and cocoa.

They didn't hold up as well as homemade, however. They aren't the kind you wrap in plastic and send with lunch. By the time you get to lunch, they will be in pieces. The chocolate chips and chunks weren't as many as it appears when I dumped in the pouch. I thought about adding more and I should have. I think these also would have benefitted from the addition of walnuts. The chocolate flavor was consistent but I wonder how much the fudge sauce contributes to the flavor. "Real" brownies don't need that sauce to be chocolate.

I could just eat them plain, but warm, from the oven brownies just scream for ice cream. I was worried I didn't have any. But, I moved a bag of peas and there was a pint of Haagen Das vanilla bean ice cream; the perfect complement to chocolate brownies. This can be supper on a cold, cold winter night.

So, if you're in the market for brownies and don't want to take the hour to make homemade ones, and you see this on sale for $2.50 or less, it's worth it. You don't get a 9x13 pan of them unless you buy two boxes. They won't be as dense as the photo on the box or as you're used to but they are fine for an afternoon or evening treat. They tasted great and warm, with ice cream, it was very satisfying. Don't buy them if you are looking for a heap of chocolate. They aren't that chocolaty. Buy them if you want a quick treat.

Beverage:  Irish Breakfast Tea

Deb

Thank you, Terry!

These are brownie pops; a pumpkin, a ghost and a black cat. (Background provided by my own black cat.) I haven't actually eaten one, but they are so neat, I had to share.

Beverage: Huckleberry tea

Deb