Ultra-rich brownie-cupcakes of the apocalypse

There is, of course, much chocolate-themed literature we could speak of. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, leaps to mind.




As does Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel.




And of course Chocolat by Joanne Harris.




But the one with the best name by far is The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse by Robert Rankin. I haven't read this book, but it is apparently about a world where toys and nursery rhymes are alive and acting like humans. A thirteen-year-old boy teams up with a detective, teddy bear Eddie, to apprehend Humpty Dumpty's murderer. As it says in the Publishers Weekly review, "when Little Boy Blue is offed, it's clear that a serial killer is prowling Toy City, leaving behind the titular chocolate bunnies as his calling card." What's not to like?




It's a good idea; I think I am going to start printing my business cards on squares of chocolate. No one will ever call me, since they'll have eaten my phone number.




In any case, I believe this world needs more chocolate-focused literature. I haven't been able to put together a very extensive list of such works, to be honest. The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse was only the fourth thing I turned up in my search.




If we do get more chocolate literature -- what we might call, if I may, Choco-lit -- it should certainly not be anything else in the murder mystery genre. Let's not give chocolate a bad name. Though I suppose that's impossible; with brownies like this coming out of the oven, it doesn't matter what you're reading. You won't be able to help but love chocolate.




Ultra-rich Brownie-Cupcakes

Adapted from Le Pain Quotidien's brownie recipe
Makes 12 brownies

Ingredients
9 ounces bittersweet chocolate (60-64% cacao)
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter, but into small pieces
5 eggs, lightly beaten
1 + 1/3 cups superfine sugar (can substitute regular granulated sugar pureed in food processor)
3 tablespoons pastry flour

Instructions
Roughly chop the chocolate into pieces.
Transfer to a medium-sized bowl and add the butter.
Melt the chocolate and butter together, either over a saucepan of simmering water or in a microwave set on medium heat (careful not to scorch the mixture)
Sift the sugar and flour together, then stir into the chocolate mixture.
Add the eggs and mix well.
Cover and let rest at room temperature for 30 minutes. Batter will thicken as it stands.
Preheat the over to 325 degrees F.
Line a muffin tin with cupcake papers.
Spoon 1/3 cup of the batter into each paper-lined cup.
Bake 30-35 minutes, or until the tops are crusted over and a straw comes out with a few crumbs.
Brownies will settle slightly as they cool.

The one fundamental flaw with Anna Karenina

If you lived in a land where it was usual to eat things like this with your tea, you'd never throw yourself under a train.




You just wouldn't.



I mean, really.


Russian Tea Cakes
Recipe courtesy Emeril Lagasse, 2004
Show: Emeril LiveEpisode: Irresistable Sweets

Cook Time: 20 min
Level: Easy
Yield: 4 dozen cookies

Ingredients
* 1 cup butter, at room temperature
* 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 1/2 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar, plus more for rolling cookies
* 2 cups flour
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1 cup finely chopped pecans or walnuts

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

Cream butter in a large mixing bowl. Add the vanilla then gradually add the 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar, beating until light and fluffy. Sift the flour, measure, then sift again with the salt. Add gradually to the butter mixture. Add the pecans and mix well.

Shape the dough into 1-inch balls and place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets. Flatten slightly using the bottom of a glass, then bake for 20 minutes, or until edges are very lightly browned. Remove the cookies from the baking sheets and roll in powdered sugar while still hot. Cool on wire racks and roll cookies again in powdered sugar before serving.

Once they are completely cooled, cookies may be stored in airtight containers for up to 1 week.

Taste all the stars and all the heavens, without kneading a thing

“If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens.”

—Robert Browning

“On our earth, before writing was invented, before the printing press was invented, poetry flourished. That’s how we know that poetry is like bread; it should be shared by all, by scholars and by peasants, by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity.”

—Pablo Neruda




“Bread may not always nourish us; but it always does us good, it even takes stiffness out of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew not what ailed us, to recognize any generosity in man or Nature, to share any unmixed and heroic joy.”

—Henry David Thoreau




“I am going to learn to make bread tomorrow. So if you may imagine me with my sleeves rolled up, mixing flour, milk, saleratus, etc., with a deal of grace. I advise you if you don’t know how to make the staff of life to learn with dispatch.”


—Emily Dickinson




“‘A loaf of bread,’ the Walrus said,
‘is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
are very good indeed—
Now, if you’re ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed.’”

— Lewis Carroll, from “The Walrus and the Carpenter”





“Bread, milk and butter are of venerable antiquity. They taste of the morning of the world.”

—Leigh Hunt




“There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”

—Mahatma Gandhi







“Give us today our daily bread.”

—Matthew 6:11




Cook's Illustrated Almost No-Knead Bread

Makes 1 large, round loaf

Ingredients
3 cups (15 ounces) unbleached all-pupose flour, plus additional four dusting work surface
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 + 1/2 teaspoons table salt
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (7 ounces) water, at room temperature
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (2 ounces) mild-flavored lager
1 tablespoon white vinegar

6- to 8-quart heavy-bottomed Dutch oven (with lid) (Can substitute heavy soup pot, but not one with plastic handles or knobs; anything that is not metal will melt in 500 degree oven.)

Instructions
Whisk flour, yeast, and salt in large bowl.
Add water, beer, and vinegar.
Using rubber spatula, fold mixture, scraping up dry flour from bottom of bowl until shaggy ball forms.
Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 8 to 18 hours.
Lay 12- by 18-inch sheet of parchment paper inside 10-inch skillet and spray with nonstick cooking spray.
Transfer dough to lightly floured work surface and knead 10 to 15 times.
Shape dough into ball by pulling edges into middle.
Transfer dough, seam-side down, to parchment-lined skillet and spray surface of dough with nonstick cooking spray.
Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature until dough has doubled in size and does not readily spring back when poked with finger, about 2 hours.
About 30 minutes before baking, adjust oven rack to lowest position, place 6- to 8-quart heavy-bottomed Dutch oven (with lid) on rack, and heat over to 500 degrees.
Lightly flour top of dough, and using razor blade or sharp knife, make one 6-inch-long, 1/2-inch-deep slit along top of dough.
Carefully remove pot from oven and remove lid.
Pick up dough by lifting parchment overhang and low into pot (let any excess parchment handg over pot edge).
Cover pot and place in oven.
Reduce over temperature to 425 degrees and bake covered for 30 minutes.
Remove lid and continue to bake until loaf is deep brown and instant-read thermometer inserted into center registers 210 degrees, 20 to 30 minutes longer.
Carefully remove bread from pot; transfer to wire rack and cool to room temperature, about 2 hours.

Blueberry muffins for Sal

One of my fondest childhood memories is sitting on the couch after school in the crook of my mother’s arm while she read me piles of wonderful children’s books. Every weekend we took a trip to the local library—oh, the glory of the children’s reading room!—and filled our big L.L. Bean canvas bag with the two red straps full to overflowing.

My afternoons were filled with the adventures of How Tom Beat Captain Najork and his Hired Sportsmen (probably the best children’s book there is, complete with a mean aunt called Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong who Tom trades in for a nice one named Aunt Bundlejoy Cozysweet), Corduroy the bear, and Bread and Jam for Frances.

And who doesn’t love Tikki Tikki Tembo? (words you can’t possibly say or write without completing the thought: Tikki Tikki Tembo, No Sa Rembo, Chari Bari Ruchi, Pip Peri Pembo! — by the way, did anyone else ever notice what a morbid book that is with little boys falling down wells every time you turn around?)

One of the most charming books my mother read me was Blueberries for Sal, a story of a girl who goes blueberry picking with her mother on the same hill where a mama bear and her cub are grazing on berries. In a thrilling twist of fate, Sal (so concentrated on eating all the berries she picks that she doesn’t notice) and the baby bear get switched so they are following the wrong mothers around the hill. Of course in the end the mistake is discovered and things are put back in order, but not before the common language of blueberry deliciousness creates a momentary bridge between species.

What is better than a tale where fresh berries drive the plot?

Of course the answer is: only fresh berries themselves! And what more classic masterpiece of the blueberry genre than muffins? I turned to that madcap genius Alton Brown for his delicious recipe from the episode of Good Eats called “muffin man”:

Alton Brown's Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients
12 1/2 ounces cake flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
Heavy pinch salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1 cup yogurt
1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries

Muffin tins, greased

Instructions
Preheat oven to 380 degrees F.
In a large bowl sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt and set aside.
In another large bowl, whisk together the sugar, oil, egg and yogurt.
Add the dry ingredients reserving 1 tablespoon of the dry ingredients and toss with the blueberries.
Stir mixture for a count of 10.
Add 1 cup blueberries to mixture and stir 3 more times.
Reserve the 1/2 cup of blueberries.
Using an ice cream scoop, add the mixture to greased muffin pans.
Sprinkle the remaining 1/2 cup of berries on top of muffins and press down lightly.
Place into the oven and increase the temperature to 400 degrees.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, rotating pan halfway through.
Remove from oven and turn out, upside down on tea towel to cool completely.
Serve immediately or store in airtight container for 2 to 3 days.

Voila! A most delicious breakfast. The muffin man—and Sal—would be pleased.

(From The Song Play Book Singing Games for Children by Mary A. Wollaston, Mary Wood, Charles Ward Crampton)

Buttermilk surprise: Temperance in a caramel-drizzled brownie

The single problem with the buttermilk scone recipe included in my last posting is the fact that it doesn't appear possible to buy buttermilk in any amount smaller than a quart. When all you need is a half-cup, that leaves a lot of buttermilk sitting in the fridge.




Not wanting my buttermilk to go more sour than it already is, I tracked down another recipe -- two recipes that could go together, actually -- that would use some of my leftover dairy. As I mixed up my buttermilk brownies and buttermilk caramel sauce, I started to think: what the heck is buttermilk, anyway?

It turns out that it 1) is not nearly what I thought it was and 2) has a much more popular history than you'd expect. First of all, according to the book Foods: Their Composition and Analysis:

While not fat-free, it is, apparently, close. Despite what images the name conjures, buttermilk is low-fat, which is why it was sometimes indicated as a cure for disorders that involve problems digesting fat:

(From Diet in Health and Disease by Julius Friedenwald and John Ruhräh)

Even healthy people consumed buttermilk with the understanding that it was "one of the most nourishing articles of diet in the entire list of nutritive substances" that will help you "develop the very maximum of beauty and vigor":

(From The Olympian System of Physical and Mental Development by Olympian System, Bernarr Macfadden, Carl Easton Williams, and Hereward Carrington)

Not only was buttermilk used as a health aid, it was a popular drink that people consumed at the soda fountain or, notably, at the bar instead of beer. This might seem odd nowadays, but there's a surprising reason: temperance!



If you read nothing else in this blog, don't miss the following colorful description of buttermilk as a temperance aid. The name of the book it comes from (Peck's Sunshine Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, Milwaukee, Wis., Generally Calculated to Throw Sunshine Instead of Clouds on the Faces of Those who Read Them by George Wilbur Peck, 1882) is alone worth the price of admission.

Well, next time I'm tempted to partake in a "sangerfest," I will think of my leftover buttermilk. Not only are my brownies and caramel sauce delicious, they're also an aid to sobriety.





Adapted from the Prudence Pennywise blog:
Old Fashioned Buttermilk Brownies

Instructions
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
3/4 cup butter
2 cups granulated sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon buttermilk
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 and 1/2 cups flour, plus 1/4 cup, divided
generous pinch of salt
1 and 1/2 cups chocolate chips, preferably milk chocolate

9 by 3 inch baking dish

Ingredients
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Lightly grease a 9 by 13 inch baking dish.
Melt butter and chocolate together and combine.
Stir in sugar and mix well.
Add eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla and mix until well combined.
Stir in 1 and 1/2 cups flour and the salt.
In a separate small bowl, combine chocolate chips and remaining 1/4 cup flour.
Pour chocolate chips and flour into brownie mixture.
Mix until just combined.
Pour brownie batter into prepared baking dish.
Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center has a few fudgy crumbs.

From the Phe/MOM/enon blog:
Buttermilk Caramel Sauce

Ingredients
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup butter
1 teaspoon light corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions
Place all ingredients, except the vanilla, into a medium saucepan over medium heat.
Stir together and bring to boil.
Allow to boil 5 minutes.
Stir in the vanilla, off the heat.
Serve warm.

"In souple scones, the wale o' food!"

If we’re talking scones, we’re talking Great Britain. And according to some, Scotland in particular—one theory holds that scones take their name from the Stone of Destiny, also known as the Stone of Scone, where the Kings of Scotland were crowned (the Abbey of Scone still stands near Perth, though the stone now resides in Westminster Abbey).

Another more humdrum and likely explanation is that the word is derived from a similar one in German (sconbrot, beautiful bread), Dutch (schoonbrot, white bread), or Gaelic (sgonn, meaning a big mouthful). Being part Scottish myself—and, let’s face it, not entirely unregal—I prefer the thing about the kings.

So if we’re talking traditions of Ye Olde Scotland, we’ve got to talk Robert Burns. Known in many quarters as the "National Bard of Scotland," Burns crafted ballads celebrating Scottish life and culture, as well as songs hailing friendship, hard work, and hearty food and drink.

Born in 1759, Burns wrote in the Scots language, an Anglic tongue rooted in early northern Middle English. The emergence of Scots literature can be dated to around 1300; we still have the earliest written Scots poem—a brief verse on the death of Alexander III (King of Scotland from 1249 to1286):

From The Original Chronicle of Andrew of Wyntoun:

You don’t say.

Well, I may not understand this language, but in the seventeenth century, Scots was the everyday tongue of a majority of the inhabitants of Lowland Scotland. And although Anglicization increased in Burns’s day, he and contemporaries such as Sir Walter Scott continued the tradition of using Scots in literature.

Today, an Anglicized version remains a spoken language in many parts of the country and crops up in contemporary fiction—an example is the Edinburgh dialect of the language found in Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, which was made into a major motion picture of the same name.

But, anyway, about the scones . . . Burns celebrated Scottish traditions, the comforts of country fare, and the camaraderie of the table. In his poem “Scotch Drink,” he venerates “souple scones, the wale o’food!” (“souple scones” being thin barley cakes, a favorite among Scottish peasants, which he identifies as the “wale o’ food,” or the choice food.)

Excerpt from The Works of Robert Burns With an Account of His Life, and a Criticism on His Writings By Robert Burns, James Currie:

A little illustration to inspire the imagination:

(From A Critique on the Poems of Robert Burns by George Gleig)

And now, my own contribution to the ancient tradition of scone-making. The following recipe—made famous in my family by my father—comes from the book Simply Scones by Leslie Weiner & Barbara Albright (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988):

Buttermilk Scones

Makes 8 scones

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
6 Tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup buttermilk
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 large egg
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Baking sheet

Instructions
Preheat oven to 400º.
In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Cut the butter into 1/2-inch cubes and distribute them over the flour mixture. With a pastry blender or two knives used scissors fashion, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
In a small bowl, stir together the buttermilk, egg, and vanilla.
Add the buttermilk mixture to the flour mixture and stir to combine.
With lightly floured hands, pat the dough into an 8-inch-diameter circle on an ungreased baking sheet. (Keep it relatively flat, not too mounded up in the center, so it will cook more evenly.)
With a serrated knife, cut into 8 wedges.
Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, or until the top is lightly browned and a cake tester or toothpick inserted into the center of a scone comes out clean.
Cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes.
Serve warm with jam and clotted cream

Election day special: "Fermez la Bush" cakes

November 4th, 2008! My first and most emphatic statement of the day is the following:

As is customary at my Elementary-school polling place, this morning the PTA had set up a rousing bake sale to fortify voters waiting in the long lines. This tradition lends the election activity that charming homegrown civic feel that recalls the grassroots ideal of a true democracy (I will leave the question of whether the U.S. is in fact a true democracy to other types of blogs . . . ). Ah, the bake sale, a staple of American civil society.

It made me wonder: are there other ways elections and baking are connected? Surely election days have played a role within the vast history of baking. Any public event where people come together for a common purpose must -- because people love to eat, especially with each other! -- have its special food traditions.

I discovered that there is in fact a certain type of cake with deep roots in New England known as "election cake." How I wish I had discovered this on Friday so I could have tried my hand at baking it and brought one to the bake sale this morning. I dug up some 19th century historical accounts describing the role of this cake:

From History of the Colony of New Haven Before and After the Union with Connecticut by Edward Rodolphus Lambert, 1838:


From History of the Colony of New Haven to Its Absorption Into Connecticut by Edward Elias Atwater, 1881:

For anyone who wants to bring something with historical importance to your returns-watching party tonight, try your hand at one of these recipes:

From White House Cook Book by Fanny Lemira Gillette and James B. Herndon, 1889:


From Aunt Mary's New England Cook Book by a New England Mother, 1881:


From The Modern Flour Confectioner by Robert Wells, 1891:

Or, best of all, a recipe from a grandmother's cookbook:

From American Cookery, a publication of Mass Boston Cooking School, 1921:

Perhaps this is not what these recipes produce, but just the same, this is my kind of election cake, from megpi on flickr: