Ellie's Crispy Fish Fingers and Ina's Outrageous Brownies

This week's CEiMB recipe, Crispy Fish Fingers, was chosen by Rainforest Recipes. I've been totally confused all week about what day it is, and almost didn't get to this. But frozen fish sticks are one food (or at least "food-like product") that my kids will eat, so I thought there was a chance that the real thing would go over well. These are pretty easy to make - throw a couple of slices of wheat bread in the food processor to make bread crumbs and then toast the crumbs in a dry skillet; dredge strips of flounder in a mixture of whole wheat flour, salt & pepper; then eggs; then the bread crumbs, and bake. I used Aggie's trick and baked them on a cooling rack on top of a baking sheet, which really helped make them crisp all around.


I served the kids' with ketchup, and David's and mine with Ellie's dipping sauce (greek yogurt, mayonnaise, dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce and a pinch of cayenne). Verdict? My littlest one loved these. My second born took a couple of bites of the fish, but was mainly distracted by the broccoli that she wanted removed from her plate. My oldest looked downright sullen at the prospect of having to eat the fish. He tried to negotiate his way to a frozen waffle with peanut butter, but we showed him who's boss and told him to focus on the sides if he didn't like the fish. David and I had a similar opinion of these - like many of Ellie's recipes, the fish fingers were very good, if maybe a little bland. But the sauce was really flavorful and pretty much took care of any bland fish problems.

The Barefoot Bloggers recipe this week is Ina's Outrageous Brownies, chosen by Eva of I'm Boring (note to Eva: No you're not!). I've had problems lately with raw brownie innards, so I was happy to see Ina's baking method for these brownies -- they get baked on a large baking sheet rather than in the usual 9"x13" pan. This worked out fabulously -- these were not thin brownies by any means, but they were baked all the way through. I should note that the full recipe makes an obscene amount of brownies. I needed a nap by the time I cut through all of them. This is definitely the brownie recipe you want to break out when you find out that the army of a small nation, an NFL team, or Kayte's 16 year old sons are coming over for dinner.

Here are the brownies. I took them out of the freezer to photograph, so they look kind of frozen in this picture:


I told the kids to scoot while I took a couple of pictures, and then they could have a brownie for dessert. Here they are, scooting:


These brownies are not just outrageous, they are "pound-of-butter-two-pounds-of- chocolate-two-plus-cups-of-sugar-half-dozen-eggs" outrageous. They really do shock the conscience even if you bake every week like I do. But if you are going to go all out in the brownie department, this is a great one to go all out with. My one mistake: the recipe calls for instant coffee powder, and I substituted an equal amount of espresso powder, which is what I had on hand. I think the coffee powder would have just enhanced the intensity of the chocolate, but the espresso powder (at least in the amount I used) gave these brownies an unmistakable coffee, or mocha, flavor. They were still very good, just not exactly what Ina (or I) had in mind.

Be sure to check out the Ellie and Barefoot blogrolls to see some fabulous versions of these!