Welcome to My Baking Adventures!

Thanks for visiting my blog – here you can see all of my adventures in baking – the good, the bad and downright disappointing.

I have my first entry ready for viewing – I raided the kids Easter candy – but my motivation was something new that Sabrina could actually eat. I took all the Peppermint Patties I could find (besides, it was those or else get stuck with the fruit flavored Tootsie Rolls – yuck) and broke them into a new brownie recipe . I decided to try Alice Medrich’s New Classic Brownie recipe, which calls for baking the brownies at a higher temperature than usual, then placing the baked brownies into an ice bath. The resulting texture is smooth, fudgy and delicious! Here’s the recipe I used:

New Classic Brownies – Alice Medrich

8 tbsp unsalted butter (1/2 cup)
4 oz unsweetened chocolate
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup all purpose flour
2/3 cup walnuts or pecans (optional) – I left these out because I don’t think nuts belong in brownies.Preheat oven to 400F and line an 8″ square metal baking pan with foil. Melt butter and chocolate together , stirring until smooth. Stir in sugar, vanilla and salt. Add eggs one at a time, followed by flour. Stir until very smooth – about 1 minute. Scrape batter into prepared pan (here’s where I spread half the batter into the pan, sprinkled the peppermint brownies pieces over the batter, then covered them with the remaining batter). Bake for 20 minutes (mine were done at 15). Prepare ice bath while brownies are baking. When brownies are done, remove from the oven and place directly into the ice bath. Add more ice if necessary, and keep the brownies in the ice bath until they are completely cool. Remove from the pan and cut into 9 brownies. What do you think of these?