Allo' Allo'

Bonjours mes amis and bienvenu! Welcome to the first (La premier) Tuesdays With Dorie event of June, 2008!



For those of you who are not familiar with Tuesdays With Dorie, we are a baking group of over 200 people that get together (well as together as you can get on the web) once a week, and bake the same recipe from the lovely baking book by Dorie Greenspan, "Baking, from my home to yours." We are baking our way through the book, one recipe at a time and enjoying every minute of it, for the most part! Through this experience, we are learning new skills, making new friends and hopefully, daring to bake things that we heretofore never would have attempted. I hope you are wearing your black beret, for this week we visited France in the form of three lovely little words . . . and they're not oh la la . . . they're . . . . French Chocolate Brownies, found on pages 92-93 of the book, as chosen by Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook .

Mmmmm . . . . decadently fudgy . . . . dense . . . . moist . . . . three little words have never meant so much.

Now, I am truly a brownie connoisseur. The angel in me says I shouldn't, but the devil in me spurs me on, and I have tried just about every brownie recipe there is going . . . . in search of the perfect brownie recipe. To me the perfect brownie is, well . . . . dense, fudgy and moist . . . . but not moist to the point where it is impossible to hold one in your hands. It should embody all of these characteristics, and yet still be portable and easy to eat with your fingers. (baby fingers poised just so of course!)



I attended the taping of a cooking show over here in December of last year, called "Cooking the Books," where the two celebrity chef's cooking in that particular episode challenged each other to bake the perfect brownie, and I have to say . . . . what they baked were not Brownies. I was most disappointed!!! They were liquid centred chocolate cakes baked in square pans . . . not Brownies . . . . you could not have picked up one of those and skulked off into the back room to scarf it down surreptitiously without anybody knowing! (I am the skulking Brownie scarfing master, and I know what I'm talking about!)



Dorie's brownies were not a disappointment in the least. They were wonderful, and embodied everything that a delicious brownie should embody. I was a little bit unsure about the rum soaked raisins, but they ended up being most delicious. (I do confess though that I didn't use real rum, but rum essence instead, which worked out just fine!) I had played with the thought of using kirsch soaked dried sour cherries, but in the end common sense prevailed, and I went with Dorie's original idea.

One thing that I did do that was totally different though, was to use my kitchen aid blender (which I won last year by writing a letter to Sainsbury's magazine) to whip up the eggs and sugar. It worked a dream, and within almost no time at all I had a lovely pale lemon coloured concoction . . . . which, when I added the chocolate and butter, turned into the most gloriously fudgy, thick and creamy chocolate batter you could imagine.



The smell when these little babies were baking was incredible, and I could hardly wait to get them out of the oven. Waiting for them to cool enough so that I could cut into them was torture beyond belief. I decided to be whimsical and cut mine into hearts. They looked so sweet and delicious cut into hearts, but what to do with the bits that didn't fit into hearts . . . . the trimmings so to speak???? Not a problem with a Brownie afficionado . . . . trimmings taste as good as hearts, maybe even better!



I did go one step further though, and turned some of them into wonderfully delicious Brownie Fudge Sundae Delights, complete with scoops of delicious Green and Black's Organic Vanilla Ice Cream, and all drizzled with some Merchant Gourmet DULCE DE LECHE chocolate toffee sauce, along with some chocolate curls sprinkled on top . . . . I could tell you how wonderfully delicious it was . . . . but then . . . . I'd have to kill you!

Todd hates chocolate cakes, pastries or cookies of any kind, so these wonderful things are mine . . . . all mine. Hmmmm . . . . I do have to do a demonstration at my Thursday evening's Young Women's activity on healthy snacks this week . . . . I wonder if these would qualify??? Nahhh . . . . let the devil take over and these are mine . . . . all . . . . mine.



I'm so excited that I get to pick next week's recipe and I have chosen to do "La Palatte's Strawberry Tart" on page 374. Seasonal and delicious! I can't wait. I hope it's a delicious as it looks in the book. In the meantime jump on over to the Tuesdays With Dorie page and check out all the other delicious brownie offerings in the blog roll!!!

*French Chocolate Brownies*
- makes 16 brownies
-Adapted from Baking From My Home to Yours.

Ingredients
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
1/3 cup raisins, dark or golden
1 1/2 tablespoons water
1 1/2 tablespoons dark rum
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons; 6 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature and cut into 12 pieces
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup sugar

Getting ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 300°F. Line an 8-inch square baking pan with foil, butter the foil, place the pan on a baking sheet, and set aside.

Whisk together the flour, salt and cinnamon, if you're using it.

Put the raisins in a small saucepan with the water, bring to a boil over medium heat and cook until the water almost evaporates. Add the rum, let it warm for about 30 seconds, turn off the heat, stand back and ignite the rum. Allow the flames to die down, and set the raisins aside until needed.

Put the chocolate in a heatproof bowl and set the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Slowly and gently melt the chocolate, stirring occasionally. Remove the bowl from the saucepan and add the butter, stirring so that it melts. It's important that the chocolate and butter not get very hot. However, if the butter is not melting, you can put the bowl back over the still-hot water for a minute. If you've got a couple of little bits of unmelted butter, leave them—it's better to have a few bits than to overheat the whole. Set the chocolate aside for the moment.

Working with a stand mixer with the whisk attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until they are thick and pale, about 2 minutes. Lower the mixer speed and pour in the chocolate-butter, mixing only until it is incorporated—you'll have a thick, creamy batter. Add the dry ingredients and mix at low speed for about 30 seconds—the dry ingredients won't be completely incorporated and that's fine. Finish folding in the dry ingredients by hand with a rubber spatula, then fold in the raisins along with any liquid remaining in the pan.

Scrape the batter into the pan and bake 50 to 60 minutes, or until the top is dry and crackled and a knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and allow the brownies to cool to warm or room temperature.

Carefully lift the brownies out of the pan, using the foil edges as handles, and transfer to a cutting board. With a long-bladed knife, cut the brownies into 16 squares, each roughly 2 inches on a side, taking care not to cut through the foil.

Serving: The brownies are good just warm or at room temperature; they're even fine cold. I like these with a little something on top or alongside—good go-alongs are whipped crème fraiche or whipped cream, ice cream or chocolate sauce or even all three!

Storing: Wrapped well, these can be kept at room temperature for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months.