Super Simple Blonde Brownies

Last week, I needed a dessert to take to a party. Unfortunately, although I had a kitchen full of ingredients, none of them added up to an existing recipe in my repertoire. So I invented one. It was very simple and pretty yummy, so I thought I'd share. I think this would be an ideal recipe to teach a young child who wants to learn how to bake things. It can be made entirely by hand, or by using a mixer.

Super Simple Blonde Brownies

10 tablespoons butter
2 cups brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
2 cups self-rising flour
a handful of chocolate chips*

*I used half dark chocolate chips and half white chocolate chips because that is what I had on hand. You can use anything that is handy, even M&M's. You can also add chopped nuts if you wish.

Preheat oven to 350F and grease a 13x9 pan.
Melt butter in a large bowl.
Pour in brown sugar, vanilla and eggs. Stir together.
Add flour slowly and stir until completely mixed in.
Pour mixture into the pan and spread it out flat. Sprinkle with chocolate chips. Bake for 30 minutes. Let cool before cutting.

Sweet chewy goodness!

Randomly on Thursday

1. 'Stache's employer gave him his employer letter! (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

2. This is a crucial piece of our adoption paperwork that we having been waiting on for three weeks. When you start thinking about your little girl living in an orphanage three extra weeks just because of one piece of paper, it's a little crazy-making. But now we have it, which means that we can make progress with our Dossier.

2. I've discovered bullet journaling. Its early yet, but I think it might be a beautiful friendship. It's a very flexible system, which I find attractive. When I use regular planners, I use about 10% of it very intensely and 90% not at all. Some days I absolutely depend on it, but many days I don't even pick it up. The bullet journal allows for that kind of waffling. There's a good explanation of how it works here.

3. Teatime with boys continues well.

4. I've been watching a very wonderful program called The Great British Baking Show, which has been particularly inspiring for Teatime. This week I made a modified Victoria Sandwich, which is a classic British Cake.

5.

6. I did a half recipe of this recipe. A Victoria Sandwich is usually 2 layers with strawberry jam in the middle, topped with a sprinkling of powdered sugar. My version was one layer, topped with raspberry jam and Devonshire cream. It was a lovely combination, which Munchkin and I relished. Twinkle, inexplicably, prefers his cake without cream.

7. Next week, The Morning After, a compilation of musical and dramatic scenes, opens at Covenant College. It will run March 31-April 2. Using excerpts from many different plays, The Morning After explores themes of sexual brokenness and redemption. Very worth seeing! For more information, go here or email boxoffice@covenant.edu.

Empty Cupboard Cookies

It's Day Before Grocery Day, which at our house can be a day of rather interesting meals. We ran out of milk yesterday and flour a few days before that, and we haven't had white sugar for a week. So choosing a treat for the boys' Tea was a bit tricky.

I thought of cloud cookies, which have almost no ingredients, but it turned out that I was still missing some, so I made up my own version, which turned out quite nice.


Maple Cloud Cookies

4 egg whites
1 1/2 c brown sugar not packed down
1 tsp maple flavoring
pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 275. Beat egg whites and salt on high until white and fluffy. Add maple flavoring and brown sugar slowly. Beat on high until you have soft peaks. Mixture should be rather dense, about the consistency of soft serve ice cream. Cover cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Drop large spoonfuls onto the cookie sheet. Bake 45 minutes. Lift foil off the cookie sheet and set aside so that cookies can cool. Cookies should be light and airy, with a crisp/hard crust.

A Cup of Tea ... and Rather a Bit More

Today, I held a Celebratory Tea. This is a particular tea party that I throw for the cast and crew at Covenant College after the show's all done and everyone has pried themselves up off the floor where they collapsed after strike.

I've done this for a few shows now, and have a bit of a framework for the menu, which is mostly different each time but there are a few favorites that always show up. However, despite the framework and the favorites, I feel like I'm always scrambling to remember what I did last time - did I double that recipe or triple it? How much food is enough food? So I had the happy thought of just recording everything here, to be inspiration to you, gentle reader, in planning your own celebratory teas, for aiding me in planning the next one, and to serve as a simple way of getting recipes to all those who requested them.

Such an inelegant, non-magazine-worthy photo, but I barely remembered to take one at all, so there you go

Clockwise from bottom:

- Various paraphernalia for making tea. With this particular crowd, black tea, preferably Earl Gray, was universally preferred.
- Gramercy Tavern's Gingerbread Cake, by smitten kitchen. I baked it in 2 loaf pans instead of a bundt pan. Completely delicious, very dark and spicy. Though only one pan is pictured, we consumed both.
- Easy Devonshire Cream, by allrecipes.com. I made a triple recipe.
- Simple Scones (recipe to follow). I made a triple recipe, minus 6 or 8 scones that we had for breakfast
- jar of lemon curd. The combination of scone, Devonshire Cream and lemon curd is sublime. (Devonshire cream is also called clotted cream.)
- ham, Brie, and mustard sandwiches. I used only a little mustard because I wanted the Brie to really stand out. I did 8 sandwiches, cut off the crusts, and cut them into triangles.
- [on the same plate as the ham and Brie] cucumber sandwiches. I used 1 large cucumber, peeled and sliced, and spread the bread with a mixture of 8 oz cream cheese, 1 clove garlic, 2 tbsp dill and 1 tbsp mayonnaise. This made 7 sandwiches and I cut off the crusts and cut them into squares. (Pro tip: use the smaller ends of the cucumber, and 4 slices will fit perfectly onto a piece of bread, so when you cut them into squares, each square has one perfect slice of cucumber.)
- plain slices of bread with the crusts cut off, for use with:
- butter mixed with sugar and cinnamon
- Bittersweet Chocolate and Pear Cake, by smitten kitchen. Amazing. Also, I was very fearful that I had over mixed, but it turned out fine.
- Twice-Baked Shortbread, by smitten kitchen. Just lovely.

I realize that there are three smitten kitchen recipes here, which seems a bit excessive even to me, but smitten kitchen has never not once steered me wrong. Wonderful recipes.

This menu more than adequately fed a medium-sized crew and a cast of 4. I made the gingerbread the night before, because it's better the second day, apparently, and I made the dough for the twice-baked shortbread the night before because that's what the recipe told me to do.



Simple Scones

1 cup heavy cream
2 cups self-rising flour

Mix thoroughly and knead several times, adding flour if necessary to keep it from being sticky. Roll it out to half an inch. Cut as you desire. Bake for 10 minutes (or until turning golden at the edges) at 450 degrees.



Incidentally, the next Covenant show is Waiting for Godot, directed by Cacey Williams. The preview is November 12th at 8, and performances are Nov 13, 14, and 20 at 8pm, with a matinee performance on November 21st at 2:30. Waiting for Godot is absurdist and thought-provoking. More information here. 

Serendipitous Froth

Until this morning I believed that there were three ways of making frothed milk, that precious commodity that adds that little soupcon of elegance that I so crave. 1) Purchase an espresso machine that includes a milk-steaming feature (cost = $$$), 2) purchase a milk-frothing gadget (cost = $), or heat milk in a saucepan until steaming but not boiling and hold a whisk between your palms and rub your hands back and forth to spin the whisk as rapidly as possible (cost = elbow grease)

But.

There is another way.

This morning there was no coffee in the house (and by coffee I actually mean espresso. ‘Stache and I do not have a coffee pot, which distresses and somehow surprises my parents every time they visit. Instead we have an espresso pot*, which takes up less space. Depending on our mood, we add hot water to the espresso to make americanos, which are essentially identical to regular coffee, or we add hot milk to make lattes.) However, I did have 6 ice cubes of espresso in the freezer. And I had a fairly snazzy KitchenAid food processor (made more perfect by the fact I paid only $2 for it). And I really love frappuccinos. The path before me was obvious.

6 ice cubes of espresso, 1 cup of milk, 1 tsp of sugar, a confident 15 seconds of pressing the “ON” button … did not produce a frappuccino. Apparently the ice to liquid ratio was too low. What it did produce, however, was more than 2 cups of coffee-flavored cold froth.

Now most of the time, frothed milk is a cup of steaming hot milk with a quarter to half inch of froth at the top. You pour in the espresso, and the milk underneath the froth mixes with it and you have a cappuccino or something similar, depending on your proportions. This was not that. This was solid froth from top to bottom and it was cold. It was fluffy and frothy and felt like a treat, even though it was very ordinary ingredients that I drink nearly every morning.

I did it again using plain milk with no ice to see if it would work, and it did. It made froth more than double the volume of the milk I put in. The boys were enchanted with this lovely treat and lobbied to have their turn drinking from my cup.   

This would be a great technique if you were trying to reduce the amount of coffee you drank in the morning, as you could continue to drink the same volume of coffee and milk, while stepping down your actual caffeine intake. I think we’re going to mostly use it to make a quick, extremely cheap treat for the boys. Milk + vanilla + sugar + 15 seconds = dessert!  

*Gratuitous pictures of the boys from when they were little and cute. Instead of huge and cute. More current pictures coming soon, I promise.* 

Not sure if Munchkin is hugging Twinkle or using him as a pillow.

*For the uninitiated, an espresso machine is different from an espresso pot. The latter is simple, fairly cheap, and you put it on a stove eye to use it. The former is usually quite complicated, offers all kinds of options, is about 10x more expensive, and is an appliance that you plug in. 

Anytime Enchiladas

This is one of my family's favorites. We almost always have the ingredients for it, and as long as the meat is already cooked, it can be on the table in 45 minutes or less.

We call them enchiladas but the knowledgeable among you may protest this description, claiming that this dish bears only a glancing resembleance to actual enchiladas, which in 'Stache's family growing up always meant a stack consisting of tortilla, sauce-and-ground-beef, onions, cheese and chopped lettuce on top, made for each person individually. If you were very hungry you got a double stack.

This is more of a casserole, and is an adaptation of an adaptation of a recipe. It really isn't even a recipe,  just a method. Whatever you call it, it's yummy.

Anytime Mexican-Inspired-Thingamabob 

Line the bottom of a 9x9 pan with:

2-3 corn tortillas 

OR 

a handful of tortilla chips 

OR

a handful of Fritos

In a bowl, mix one of the following: 

1 pkg taco seasoning

OR

1 pkg fajita seasoning 

OR 

a generous sprinkling of chili powder and a good sprinkling of cumin 

with at least two of the following: 

1 lb ground beef, ground

OR

2 chicken breasts, cooked and chopped

OR 

1 can of black beans, drained

OR 

1 can kidney beans, drained

OR

1 can corn kernels, drained

OR 

1 can spinach, drained 

OR 

1 can chickpeas, drained 

OR 

1 can chickpeas, drained and pureed 

OR

2 onions, chopped 

OR 

2 onions, chopped and sauteed 

I don't recommend mixing meats for this dish. If you want a vegetarian dish, you should probably use at least 3 vegetables. Spread half of this mixture over the tortillas. Grate 8 oz of cheese, using any combination of: 

cheddar

OR

mozzarella

OR 

pepperjack

OR

colby 

Sprinkle half the cheese over the dish. On top of the cheese, spread:

2-3 corn tortillas

OR 

a handful of tortilla chips 

OR 

a handful of Fritos 

Next layer the rest of your mixture. If you want to add extra stuff at this point, you can. Some things to try:

black olives 

OR 

avocado slices 

OR 

jalapeno slices 

OR 

banana peppers 

OR

chopped bell pepper 

OR 

diced fresh tomato

Sprinkle the rest of the cheese on top. Over the cheese, pour: 

1 can enchilada sauce 

OR 

a scant 2 cups homemade enchilada sauce 

OR 

1 can diced tomatoes and chilis, pureed with liquid

OR 

1 can tomatoes and 1 small can green chilis, pureed with liquid

Bake for 40 minutes at 350 or until the cheese is melted and the enchiladas are hot all the way
through. Serves 4 adults.

Right before I popped it in the oven. I used corn tortillas, chili powder and cumin, chicken, black beans, 4 oz cheddar and 4 oz pepperjack, and a can of diced tomatoes with chilis.

Any way we've made it, it's been great!