Posted by Adam Kuban, April 2, 2008 at 5:30 PM
Today's Cook the Book recipe, adapted from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book, is for Brooklyn Brownout Cake, basically a chocolate-lover's one-stop shop for chocomadness. Even though the cake as a whole might seem to take more than a bit of work, each of the components—devil's food cake, chocolate brownies, and ganache—are all simple affairs in and of themselves. A bonus is that you can make the brownies ahead of time and just reserve a few for the cake later.
Win 'The Sweet Melissa Baking Book'
As is always the case with our Cook the Books, we're giving away a number of them. Enter to win here »
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Posted by The Serious Eats Team, February 11, 2008 at 4:45 PM
This week's Cook the Book is a little different—and sweeter—than most. Usually, we feature one book the entire week, excerpting adapted recipes as the days go by. This week, in honor of Valentine's Day, we've put together a list of our favorite books on chocolate, and we'll be featuring a recipe from each.
First up is Alice Medrich's Bittersweet
, and a recipe for cocoa brownies. Think brownies are too pedestrian for Valentine's Day? Think again. They're pure comfort—perfect for expressing how dear your valentine has become to you over the years.
Bittersweet is indispensable for anyone who loves baking with bittersweet chocolate. Each of Medrich's recipes is tailored to the stuff, and the book covers every question you might have about substituting one type of chocolate for another, how to decorate with chocolate, and almost anything else you'd want to know about the confection.
Win the Serious Eats Chocolate Library
You can win Bittersweet, along with four other fantastic chocolate books (to be revealed as the week progresses) by answering the following question in the comments:
What is your favorite chocolate recipe?
One (1) winner will be chosen at random from among the comments of this post. Comments will be open until 6 p.m. ET February 12. The standard Serious Eats contest rules apply.
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Posted by Ed Levine, January 20, 2008 at 12:00 PM
This week's Cartoon Kitchen features Serious Eats' cartoonist in residence Larry Gonick's spin on filbert brownies. —Ed Levine
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Posted by Ed Levine, January 1, 2008 at 1:00 PM
If portion control is one of the keys to weight control, these mocha brownie thins, courtesy of the great Karen Barker, pastry chef and co-owner (along with her chef-husband Ben Barker) of the Magnolia Grill in Durham, North Carolina, are just what the weight-loss doctor ordered. The only problem with this notion: These bad boys are so good it's impossible to eat just one. In fact my inability to control myself when confronted by a platter of these last night prompted my "To Eat or Not to Eat" post. Also, many thanks for all the other brownie recipe suggestions offered up by the Serious Eats community.
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Posted by The Pioneer Woman, October 8, 2007 at 12:00 PM
Editor's note: This column marks the debut of Ree, aka The Pioneer Woman, on Serious Eats. Many of you may already know her from her own blogs, Confessions of a Pioneer Woman and The Pioneer Woman Cooks. As she describes herself there, "I’m a former city girl. I used to live in Los Angeles, where I wore black pumps, ran into celebrities, and ate sushi, Thai food, and Mediterranean cuisine every time I turned around. Then I met and married a hunky cattle rancher, moved to his ranch in the middle of nowhere, and spent the next decade figuring out how to cook for men who think the sun rises and sets in a steak and baked potato. It’s been a hilarious culinary journey." You can find out more about her here, but for now, let's cut to the chase. —Adam
Does the quality of baking chocolate really matter? As a former food snob, this question has always plagued me.
I stirred up a tiny bit of ire on my own cooking site when I dared to suggest, in a post about lasagna, that it was permissible to use processed Parmesan cheese in the recipe. I would like to state for the record that it was not my intention to personally offend anyone with this suggestion. But when you're a former city girl living in the middle of nowhere on a working cattle ranch, you learn to improvise with the ingredients you can get.
Baking chocolate is no exception. My local grocery store carries one brand only, and I generally use it with a smile. Still, sometimes I hear the voices in my head—the voices of many a pastry chef who came before me (well, I'm not a pastry chef, but follow along here)—who've always said that the quality of baking chocolate makes all the difference in baking. This has bothered me for awhile, so while my husband was working cattle over the weekend, I decided to get to the bottom of The Great Baking Chocolate Debate. I decided to make brownies.
I dug up a basic brownie recipe—one my mom used to make. My plan was to incorporate two different baking chocolates into two different batches of the same brownie recipe, and I wanted it to be a recipe I was familiar with so I'd focus solely on the flavor of the chocolate itself. I made plans to conduct a blind taste test with some people in my life and possibly a couple of cows, since I don't have any neighbors. My objective was simple: to find out, once and for all, if there was any merit at all to this baking chocolate hype. Come along and see what happened!
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Posted by Dorie Greenspan, August 23, 2007 at 4:15 PM
A friend and I were talking this week about how popular some American desserts have become in Paris. There are les brownies and le cake aux carottes and le cheesecake made with Philadelphia, which is what Kraft cream cheese is often called there. And all this talk made me think of my own Gallic-American creation, French Chocolate Brownies, a dessert that started as one thing and ended as another.
It had been my intention to make a fondant chocolat for a dinner party I was having in Paris. As I'm writing this, it occurs to me: That was a terrible idea! What was I thinking? Of all the French things I could have chosen, why a fondant, which is super easy and one of only a few desserts the French make at home? (Most French people go to their handy, fabulous pâtisseries to buy dessert.)
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Posted by Ed Levine, April 12, 2007 at 2:45 PM
Julia Moskin's brownie article in yesterday's New York Times reminded me of something French pastry chef Francois Payard said to me at a friend's wedding many years ago.
When he found out that Sarabeth Levine of Sarabeth's in New York City had won the James Beard Award for Best Pastry Chef in the U.S., Payard said, in his inimitable French-dipped English, "I cannot believe that. She makes brownies and cookies and pies. She's not a pastry chef, she's a 'bakeur.' And a 'bakeur' is not a pastry chef."
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