I Never Promised You an Organic Garden

It is official, I made the best brownies ever this week.  That includes boxed brownies and restaurant brownies.  I tried the Cooks Illustrated brownies earlier this year and was not impressed with how they turned out, so I turned to Alton Brown for a recipe.  And let me tell you, I hit the jackpot.  These brownies are relatively easy to make, taste very chocolaty, and have a nice fudgey texture.

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Buoyed by my baking success earlier this week, I decided to make chocolate chocolate chip bread for the potluck at church. I have made this recipe before in muffin form, so I didn’t expect any problems.  Unfortunately, I underestimated my mess making abilities.

The recipe calls for 1 stick of butter melted, so I popped it in the microwave, like I have done 100 times, to melt the butter.  About 30 seconds in, I heard a bang and turned to see that the unmelted half of the butter had exploded all over the inside of the microwave.

And, in this case exploded is not too strong of a word.  There was literally butter all over the inside of the microwave including under the rotating tray. It was quite impressive.  It took me 15 minutes to clean out the inside of the microwave so I could complete the melting process.

I did, however, learn a valuable lesson for future butter melting: Do not melt a whole stick of butter all at once on high in the microwave.  From now on, I will use short burst at about half power.  On the bright side, our microwave is now quite clean.

This week’s baking went really well.  I made Quick Cinnamon Buns with Buttermilk Icing from Cooks Illustrated and they were delicious!!  They were biscuit style buns, so they didn’t have to rise like traditional cinnamon buns.  Hence, the “quick” in the name.

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I just realized the week is almost over, and I never blogged about my baking adventure this week.  I did, however, remember to bake so the important bases are covered.  Since Matt is out of town this week, and I wanted to try and use ingredients we had on hand, I decided to go the easy route and make Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookie Bars.  They are very similar in prep to chocolate chip cookies, but require a few extra ingredients and turned out much thicker and cakier than my cookies ever do.  With Matt being gone, I am also missing our normal camera so, I had to use our old point and shoot.  Please forgive the subpar photos of my food. (more…)

This week’s baking adventure went a lot better than the brownies from last week.  I made Cook’s Illustrated’s Perfect Pound Cake, and it really did turn out nearly perfect.  The flavor, crumb, and crust all turned out as they should.  Needless to say I was very excited.  I’ve never made pound cake before, so I don’t know how it typically rates on the difficulty scale, but I thought it was pretty easy.  I took the finished cake to Loops of Love on Tuesday, and everyone seemed to really enjoy it.  It was a lot of fun to be able to share something I made with all my friends.

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I tried my hand at baking brownies from scratch this evening  unsupervised, and It definitely felt like my first baking fail. I was attempting to make Cooks Illustrated’s Chewy Brownies.  I have had problems with making box brownies in the past, and it seems my bad luck has followed me into the world of from-scratch baking.  From the beginning things went wrong:

• I used the wrong measuring cup and added a 1/4 cup of cocoa powder instead of the 1/3 cup the recipe called for and didn’t notice until it was too late to add more.  I tried to add some anyway.
• Once I was well past the point of no return, I realized that I was about 3/4 of a cup short on sugar.  After an “emergency” phone call to Matt at his meeting, I substituted powdered sugar for the missing granulated sugar. Who knows what that has done to the texture of the brownies
• The bowl I selected was not quite big enough for all my ingredients so by the end I was spilling quite a bit of flour over the edges as I mixed.  My shirt is now a lighter shade of blue.
• I nearly put  in two time more salt than the recipe called for. Just before I dumped it in, I realized I was supposed to add 3/4 of a TEASPOON and not a 3/4 of a tablespoon.
• The batter itself tasted pretty bitter before I poured it in the pan. I don’t know if that is because of the espresso the recipe called for, or because I didn’t use the right sugar, or because I added more cocoa at the last minute.  But I do know it didn’t taste anything like the box brownie mix I am used to.
• When I removed the brownies from the pan using the aluminum foil sling, the whole thing buckled and created a large crack down the middle of the brownies. (more…)

For this week’s baking adventure, I made chocolate chip cookies.  Now before everyone starts protesting that anyone can make chocolate chip cookies and surely I have made them before,  these were not just any chocolate chip cookies.  These were Cooks Illustrated’s Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies, which roughly translates to amazingly tasty chocolate chip cookies with a lot of complicated steps added in. Not only that, but I had the added complication of trying to bake while Matt simultaneously made salsa. This means I had a lot less space than normal, and Matt wasn’t as readily available to grab things for me or check my progress.  Both of us trying to use the kitchen at the same time is not something I would enjoy repeating.

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My baking this week was directed much more by ingredients on hand (or not on hand) than a desire to make any particular dish. We were very low on flour and a few other key ingredients.  It also just so happened that I wanted to share my cookies with a group of friends, one of which is gluten intolerant.  So meringue cookies were the perfect solution.

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It is only the second week of my baking challenge, and I am already breaking the rules I created.  I had a really strong craving for chocolate-chocolate chip muffins this week, but alas Cooks Illustrated doesn’t have a recipe for them.  So, instead of making one of the Cooks Illustrated recipes like I was supposed to, I pull out another favorite in our house:  ”I’m Just Here For More Food” by Alton Brown.  To make up for my transgression, I did bake a batch of granola bars too, though. (more…)

I decided to start my baking adventure with a peach cake from the July/August 2011 Cooks Illustrated.  Peaches are in season right now, and we have a couple local sources so it seemed like a good place to start.  For a first dish this turned out to be a little bit more complicated and time consuming than I had hoped, but I have to say I am pleased with how the cake turned out.
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