TWD: Rick Katz's brownies for Julia (and milk chocolate mini bundts)

Ok, let me be honest with you here, the Saints won the Superbowl so there is pretty much nothing else on my mind! There is an enormous Saints parade tonight which I'm planning to brave with the little girls. So I'm going to make this short and sweet.

These brownies are a recipe from pastry chef Rick Katz by way of Dorie Greenspan. Dorie explains that Rick used to make these brownies for Julia Child while Dorie and Julia were working on Julia's cookbook. The brownies are unusual because half of the sugar and eggs are stirred into the chocolate/butter and the other half are beaten until they are frothy and almost meringue-like and then folded into the chocolate. Finally, a small amount of flour is sprinkled over the top and gently folded into the batter. The result is a very, very dense and fudgy brownie. A few of the Tuesday with Dorie bakers thought they were a little too fudgy (it's pretty much impossible to cut them into neat little squares) but I thought they were perfect. Sorry for the very ugly brownie picture, there was literally one little corner piece left in the pan when I went to take a picture! These are so good I'm trying to hold myself back from baking them again. This delicious recipe was chosen by Tanya of Chocolatechic

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Last week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe was for Milk Chocolate Mini Bundts and was selected by Kristen of I'm Right About Everything. I couldn't pass up these adorable little cakes because I love milk chocolate and it is almost never used in baking! I loved the sweet, delicate chocolate flavor of these cakes. A few of the TWD bakers mentioned that the cakes were a little dry so I used buttermilk in place of the regular milk and made sure to keep a close eye on them as they baked. The cakes popped right out of the pan but ended up looking a little bit shaggy. I skipped the chocolate glaze as it seemed to be causing a bit of difficulty for most of the bakers and served the cakes with a little scoop of vanilla ice cream.

TWD: Cherry-Fudge Brownie Torte

So, great news. I'm now brave enough to take showers during the day when I'm all alone with both babies! Yeah, Eloise Grace will be four months old on Friday which means that for the last four months I have been averaging between 3 and 4 showers a week and that is simply unacceptable. I had no idea how invigorating and, dare I say, humanizing showering can be. This is how I do it: nurse Eloise until she passes out and quickly pop pacifier into her mouth then very gently transfer her to the swing. Oh yeah, and I HAVE to do this at approximately 9am because that is when Sesame Street comes on. That's right parenting gods, I know I promised to wait until Helen Mae was two before letting her so much as glance at the TV, but guess what, she's 20 months old and she is in love with Elmo. Oh, and I've decided not to feel guilty about it either- I've decided to save up my guilt for better things. Things like having two slices of this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe: cherry-fudge brownie torte in place of doing my pilates DVD last night.

This week's delicious recipe was chosen by April of Short + Rose and can be found on her blog. I decided to skip the mousse (cream cheese, cream, mascarpone cheese, and sugar) that was supposed to adorn the top of this lovely, rich cake. The cake was so good that I didn't want to risk hating the mousse because of the cream cheese- I know, I know, that's kind of babyish, but I really hate it! The texture of the cake is very fudgy (as the name would imply). The cake is full of chocolate- both melted semi-sweet and cocoa powder and studded with dried cherries that have been cooked down in cherry brandy (couldn't find the kirsch that Dorie called for). I really, really loved the combination- it was a very sophisticated take on Black Forrest cake- I might even top it with plain old whipped cream next time I make it.

This cake was so good that I gave a third of it away and put a third of it in the freezer so that we wouldn't scarf the whole thing down!

TWD: Brownie Buttons

Whoa these brownies were so fabulous! Remember how I said that last week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe for Banana Bundt Cake wasn't much of a temptation for me? Well, this week was the total opposite! I could not stop eating these! It certainly doesn't help that the brownies are made in mini-muffin tins and therefore require no cutting... too easy to grab and pop into your mouth! This week's recipe was chosen by Jayma of Two Scientists Experimenting in the Kitchen and I cannot thank her enough for this pick because I honestly thought these would be dry and boring brownies. The picture in Baking From My Home to Yours is really cute but I just assumed that the mini muffin tin would turn out little hard brownie rocks. Instead they ended up being extremely fudgy and intensely flavorful. The recipe calls for orange zest rubbed into a teaspoon of sugar to be added to the batter-now some of the TWD bakers found the orange flavor to be very subtle- but mine was very strong! Wow! I love chocolate and orange together but I've never had orange flavored brownies. The recipe calls for dipping the tops of the brownies in white chocolate but I didn't get around to doing it for this batch but I'm making a quadruple batch for my brother's graduation party this weekend so I'm going to try it with the chocolate this time around.

TWD: Chipster Topped Brownies and Mango Bread

In the words of Britney Spears: oops... I did it again- two weeks have gone by and although I have been baking right along with Tuesdays with Dorie, I have yet to post about the recipes! The good news is that we are now fully moved into our apartment. Whew, hopefully things will be more regular here at Sandmuffin now that everything is more settled (at least until the baby comes!).

Ok, so this week's TWD recipe was Chipster Topped Brownies chosen by Beth of Supplicious. Basically these are fudgy brownies topped with a layer of chocolate chip cookies... pure genius!! The only problem was that I underbaked mine quite a bit. You see the top layer bakes and browns faster than the brownie layer can firm up so I misjudged when to pull them out. So, I tried to salvage them by putting them back in the oven after they had sat and cooled for well over an hour on the counter. It sort of worked, as in, pretty much the whole giant pan got eaten, but honestly I want to try this one again because I can tell that it is a really decadent, wonderful recipe if baked properly!!
Ok and last week's recipe was Fresh Mango Bread chosen by Kelly of Baking with the Boys. I was really excited about this recipe because it sounded so tropical: fresh mango, lime zest, lots of ginger, raisins, and cinnamon and it did not disapoint! In fact, the bread turned out very differently from how I had imagined it would- it was very moist and the flavor was complex and the outside had a wonderful chewy crust. The thing that struck me as odd about this recipe was the baking time of one and a half hours! That seemed so long- but I went ahead and stuck with it (I tented with foil after one hour) and the bread really needed all of that time to bake properly.

Here is Helen Mae after eating her first ever New Orleans style snowball- obviously she had a lime flavored one: