A 2012 count calorie brownie to welcome the new year!

What better way to end the year than with a final fix, before your sent off to food rehab in 2012? I decided to make a monster dessert. This baby is a brownie spooning with some cookie dough, covered under a blanket of chocolate ganche and this was the result of that situation. Keep your scale hidden underground for a few days after this one.

Brownie recipe
1 1/4 c flour
1 ts salt
2 Tb coco powder
11 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2 sticks butter (cubed)
1 1/2 c sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
5 eggs
2 ts vanilla


Over a double boiler melt your chocolate and cubed butter. Once the chocolate and butter is smooth, add your sugars and take off the heat. Add 3 eggs to the chocolate mixture and mix well. Then add the other 2 eggs and vanilla.

In another bowl, mix your flour, salt and coco powder. Sprinkle the flour mixture over your chocolate mixture and fold it into the chocolate mixture, being sure not to overwork the batter.

Chocolate chip cookie dough recipe
1 1/8 c flour
1/2 ts baking soda
1/2 ts salt
1 stick butter (room temp)
3/8 c white sugar
3/8 c brown sugar
1/2 ts vanilla
1 egg
1 c chocolate chips

Cream your room temperature butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Mix in your egg and vanilla.

In another bowl, mix your flour, baking soda and salt.

Add your flour mixture into your butter mixture.

Add your chocolate chips.

Chocolate ganche recipe
12 oz chocolate
1 c heavy cream

Over a double broiler melt your chocolate and cream together, stir until shiny and smooth. Take off the heat. You can use the ganche several different ways. We are going to use this ganche right away.

Steps...
Make your brownie batter and cookie dough batter

Butter a 9x13 baking dish and lay parchment paper in the pan

Pour your brownie mixture into the pan

Scoop out your cookie dough and lay on top of the brownie batter, softly push the down a bit.

Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes to 1 hr.

Cool the brownie and once the brownie is cool, make your ganche and pour the ganche over your brownie.

Let the ganche set and then cut your brownies.

Enjoy!

And so it begins

Starting my brownie batter off with some chocolate and butter

I added some eggs to my chocolate mixture and in another bowl mixed my dry ingredients together. Then I folded my dry into the wet mixture.

Now I'm starting my chocolate chip cookie dough by creaming my sugars and my butter

I have my dry to the left (flour, baking soda, salt) and my wet (butter, sugar, egg, vanilla) to the right.


My cookie dough batter

Poured my brownie mix into my buttered and parchment papered baking dish

Then I scooped my cookie dough over the brownie batter

The baked cookie, brownie beast

Just when you thought that you had escaped the gluttony, dun dun dun... BAM! chocolate ganche.

On the 13th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, one Italian rum cake

Here are some photos of the steps in making an Italian rum cake. I made the cake for Christmas Eve. My family has Italian food on Christmas Eve every year, so the cake perfectly suited the occasion. There are also some photos of Christmas.

The egg yolk and sugar mixture to the left and the egg white mixture to the right

The finished batter with the egg white mixture and cake flour folded into the egg yolk mix

My cake pans filled

My pastry cream that I made the day prior. Chocolate and Vanilla



The rum syrup

My baked and cooled cakes

Sponge cake, brushed with the rum syrup, layered with the pastry cream

crumb coated with whipped frosting

Finished cake!

Everyone seemed to like the cake

Front house decorated

Cosmo eating his Christmas Eve dinner

Lasagna, eggplant parm, meatballs and sausage and my amazing homemade garlic bread

I thought that my gift was the most hilarious Christmas photo, everyone in their snuggies!

The tree

Kaspy yawning

The prime rib for Christmas dinner

Cookie cook off 2011

Every year my sister, my mom and I do a cookie day, a few days before Christmas Eve and give the cookies out to coworkers, neighbors,friends and we also have them on Christmas Eve and Christmas to snack on. I give you 2011's Cookie cook off.

The cookie list

The ingredients

The ginger cookie wet and dry bowls

Ginger cookie batter

Ginger cookies baked

Making the peanut butter cookie batter

Peanut butter cookie batter

Baked peanut butter cookies with Hershey kisses



M&M cookie batter

M&M baked cookies


The sugar cookies that took me 3 hours to make.


Butterscotch haystack cookies

The decorating table

The anisette cookies.. mmm

Decorated sugar cookies

A tray of sugar cookies


Some of the plated cookies

All wrapped up and ready to go out

Whipped browned butter cake with lemon curd and whipped frosting

So I've made several vanilla or white cakes from scratch. Every time I make one, they taste terrible. So I was researching a lemon curb recipe and came across a lemon curd cake recipe. I've been wanting to make lemon curd forever, I've always been a little nervous making a curd because I was afraid of the curd.... curdling haha. I've made lemon bars before that came out o-mazing, thank you Fresh Market for turning me into a lemon lover. So I saw this recipe and the cake looked really good. I crossed my fingers as I followed the whipped browned butter cake recipe and to my surprise, the cake was the best butter cake that I've ever had!

The cake was a process, I'm not going to lie. The curd recipe called for 8 eggs and the cake called for 6. The curd called for 2 and a half sticks of butter and the cake called for 3. I had to brown 3 sticks of butter.

The browned butter cake and I've never browned butter for any kind of baked good, I didn't think that I would like it, but it tasted amazing and I'm going to try more browned butter recipes in the future, they are just a lot of work. I had to brown the butter and then let the butter cool a bit, before I put the butter back into the fridge to firm up again, like a stick of butter, straight out of the fridge.

I had to beat the cold browned butter until fluffy for about 5 minutes and then I added my sugar and had to beat for 10 minutes. I added my eggs, mixing after each egg, so that took about 5 minutes. Then added part of my flour mixture and part of my milk until everything was combined. The batter was thick and the cake baked great, I only had to even off one of the cakes and hardly had to touch it. Oh and I used a hand held mixer! My stand mixer is broken.

The curd started off with juicing 10 lemons by hand, because I don't have a lemon juicer, that was fun. The curd came out ok, I think that I would use a different recipe next time though, I'm not sure if it had too many eggs in it or not.

Assembling the cake was a bit of a challenge because the curd kept on making the layers slide, so I had to secure the cake with dowels. The cake was for my brother in law's birthday and I guess I kind of forget to let everyone know, so the game of the night was to try to figure out who had a lucky dowel and who didn't. I think that it went over well.

I tried a few different recipes for the candied lemon slices, the first attempt was a failure, wasted 2 cups of sugar and 2 lemons on that one. I ended up cutting the lemon thin, threw them on a pan with some parchment and sprinkled some sugar on top and baked on the lowest temp until the lemon slices were dried out to my liking. I used the candied lemon slices as a garnish.