Cookie Dough Brownie Bombs.... Danger, Danger!

In summer time, I work for a tutoring company.  In order to stay on the good side of the kids I teach I make them treats eat week..... it's a great job. Anyways, I usually try to only make really intense desserts when I have a legitimate excuse, meaning I have many people to give them so they do not sit in my fridge for days on end (ok, maybe just a few days before they get eaten). I consider this job a very legitimate excuse (and I get reimbursed for the materials, even better!!).   Anyways, I decided to go with what I was comfortable with for the first week.... brownies, cooking dough and chocolate! Luckily for me, Gertrude's inability to make cookies was not a problem because this recipe has cookie DOUGH, not cookies.

Here is the recipe:
http://thedomesticrebel.com/2013/02/20/chocolate-chip-cookie-dough-brownie-bombs/

 Anyways basic idea.... make cookie dough (without eggs of course!), roll it into balls, make brownies, smoosh them up, roll smooshed brownies around cookie dough balls, dip in chocolate.... there really is no way they could not be delicious.  And the were.  These are a little bit too good, so I was very happy to get these out of the house very quickly.  The whole process went very smoothly (hence I don't have a long story like I usually do!).  Gertrude can handle brownies pretty well, so I only had to do some minmal edge trimming to ensure the brownies were fudgey enough to smoosh.   Nom Nom Nom Nom

Stay tuned for more kitchen adventures!!

The father of all berry pies

I really have just been on a roll with these fruity desserts lately.  While for mother's day I made lemon cupcakes, I went with a berry pie for father's day as per the request of my wonderful father. Pumpkin and apple pies are the only types of pies I have experience making, so I was slightly worried about the idea of a berry pie.  I imagined a sloppy, juicy mess of berries that would seep through the crust to make it more of a cobbler instead of a pie (not that there is anything wrong with that, but my dad specifically requested a berry PIE).  Regardless, I decided to go with a fairly simple recipe (aka the first recipe listed on google): http://allrecipes.com/recipe/three-berry-pie/ 

I went all the way out to a local fruit stand to get the berries for this project (have to get the best for dad, right?).  However, apparently raspberries have been pretty popular so I literally got the last basket of raspberries.  The recipe calls for two cups raspberries, and I only had one cup because of this tragic raspberry shortage. Therefore,   the final berry amounts I used were one cup strawberry, two cups blueberries and two cup raspberries.  Although this was 1/2 cup less total berries than the recipe calls for, I am glad I did not use more! As you will soon see, my pie exploded a bit!

For this pie, there was no way I was going to trust Gertrude after the bread roll disaster of last week: (great recipe btw if you are interested http://allrecipes.com/recipe/light-wheat-rolls/ )

That does not look too bad, does it??? OH, wait. That was the one not BURNT roll.  Here are the bottoms of all the rest!

Not cool Gertrude.  I think you understand now why I was not going to trust Gertrude with this berry important project that was my pie.  I ended up using my parents' oven to bake my pie after I finished creating a beautiful lattice on top.  I realized aftwewards though, by creating a lattice I effectively reduced the volume of the pie that was allowed to hold berries (compared to if I had a full crust on top that prevented any spillage).  Therefore, some of the berries oozed out a little bit in the baking process to create a not super aesthetically pleasing pie.  Luckily, the pie was simple DIVINE! The cornstarch I added helped to thicken the berry filling to squelch all qualms I previously had about having a too-juicy pie.  The slices did not slice as well as I hoped (hence the lack of nice "pie slice" pictures), but this was definitely one of the best pieces of pie I have ever eaten- and believe me, I have eaten a lot of pie in my day.

When life hand you lemons, add more butter.

This past Wednesday was another one of my roommate's birthdays (leaving me as the only 20 year old left in the house!).  I have decided that weekend birthdays are much easier for the cake bakers, since some of the cakes I would love to make are a bit too elaborate for me to successfully complete while trying to go through my daily schedule.  After not-so-subtly asking the birthday girl the day before her birthday what type of dessert she would like, she gave me five different options that I could choose from in order to create an element of surprise.  I found that the one that I could most easily squeeze (pun intended) into my day was this one http://www.ziplist.com/recipes/574736-Lemony_Lemon_Brownies.

These was actually not made in Gertrude, since my trusty sidekick and I wanted to actually surprise the birthday girl so we headed down the street to some friends' house to use their oven. Funny story about making these... If you read the instructions, you will see it calls for 1/2 cup butter.  This should be a very simple piece of instruction to follow for a fairly avid baker like myself.  However, the butter I was using was not in the normal shape.... it was longer and thinner than usual.  For some reason in my head, I thought that I needed to add TWO sticks of butter to make 1/2 cup.  So I did.... and I did not realize until they were baking that I may possibly have doubled the amount of butter.  But honestly, can you ever go wrong with doubling the amount of butter? Of course not.  After putting both lemon glaze and  frosting on these bad boys, I was pretty positive that these would be pretty delicious.  And I was right! They were gone within a matter of hours (to our credit, it was an 8 by 8 pan, not 9 by 13). Think lemon fudge.

To conclude, I want to give a special shout-out to my trusty lemon zestor... without your fine lemon zesting (and juicing) technique, none of this would possible.