TWD: Chipster Topped Brownies

Great news! This is going to be a really short post! That's because (1) I made these brownies at the beginning of May and can't remember a thing about them other than the fact that 3/4 of the pan was raw; and (2) I spent 17 hours this weekend in a minivan with my three small children, and therefore can't form any coherent thoughts that don't involve holding it for just a little bit longer or not being there yet.

It is really difficult for me to write anything short because I've been trained in a profession that is renowned for its verbosity. I make a living writing things that begin with "Comes now the Counterclaim Defendant, by and through its undersigned counsel of record, and respectfully submits its Brief In Support of Its Motion To Strike the Counterclaim Plantiff's Affidavit in Support of Motion for Partial Summary Judgment" and go downhill from there. But I've recently joined Twitter, which is great for interfacing with other food bloggers, and that is helping re-train me to make my points in 140 characters or less. My grammar and spelling have gone to hell in the process, but I can make succinct points in a way that I never could before. And this reprogramming comes in very handy on nights like tonight, when deep fatigue has set in, because I can tweet my post.

This is why 30 Day Shred not working even tho been at it for 92 days:


Always eager to de-pan. D/n wait til room temp like told. Looks like I might get lucky:


Nope, d/n get lucky.


Used Pyrex pan, @ezrapoundcake says next time use metal pan, will solve raw brownie woes. Will do that, thx Rebecca.

Served outside edges 2 friends @ KY Derby party. Think they liked but coulda been bourbon talking. Brownie part better than cookie part IMO.


Beth at Supplicious chose Chipster Topped Brownies - thanks Beth!

TWD: Caramel Crunch Bars

There is a guy in my office I've worked with on several occasions over the years. He is not in my practice group, but our areas overlap every once in a while. Let's call him W. W kind of has a quirky eccentric professor quality about him, and whenever I have a conversation with him, I walk away amused in a "what WAS that?" kind of way. I'll never forget the first time we worked together on a matter, and he started corresponding with me in haiku:

Will they assume lease?
Until we know the status
We will have no peace

Bonus points for working an actual rhyme into that haiku, W. Given that most of my colleagues communicate with me in prose, I wasn't quite sure what to do with this -- but I finally decided that if someone asks you a question in haiku, you should answer in haiku. And so I responded:

They have sixty days
We can't make them go faster
I'll find peace somehow

And so it went. But what started as a couple of nerds just having a good time turned out to be a surprisingly efficient way to communicate. When you have to express your thoughts in a mere 17 syllables, and in a 5/7/5 pattern at that, you really need to think about what you want to say and choose your words carefully. W and I ended up getting a good result in this matter while conducting at least 50% of our communications in haiku. So I know that it IS possible to get the job done without wasting lots of words.

But you'd never know that from my blog posts, which tend to go on and on (and on). That's consistent with most of my communications; it's pretty much the same thing if I leave you a voice mail message, send you an email, or run into you at the grocery store. Facebook routinely tells me that I've run out of characters when I try to update my status -- that's just plain embarassing. But I can't help it; I have a lot of not-interesting things to say in non-succinct ways. But I swore to myself that this week I WILL keep my TWD post short (er, minus this extra long intro), and the only way I can reliably do that is by forcing myself to stay within the rigid confines of the 5/7/5 haiku form. Plus, Sabrina has already shown us that haiku is an acceptable literary form to use in a food blog, so the ground has been broken. So without further delay . . .

Buy one get one free
Way too much milk chocolate
Used lots of it here


Cover KitchenAid
Don't say we didn't warn you
If you get powdered


Here is the batter
I think that it was yummy
But it's been awhile


Spread batter in pan
Will this be like a cookie?
Or more like brownie?


Bars skinny like Posh
Need a little fattening
Chocolate and heath


Now that's more like it
I just made my own Heath bar!
I think I'll dig in


Name says "caramel"
No caramel making, though
Breathed sigh of relief

Crunch bars delicious!
Must get them out of house quick
Too many baked goods


Tried to wrap pretty
To say "We love you, teachers!"
Picture really bad


Another great treat
Dorie has done it again!
I love TWD!

For recipe go
To What's Left on the table?
Big thank you, Whitney!

Chewy, Chunky Blondies

One unanticipated side effect of joining Tuesdays with Dorie and Barefoot Bloggers is that suddenly it seems just plain wrong to cook or bake ANYTHING without taking pictures of it, waxing poetic about its good, bad and ugly, and sharing it all on the World Wide Web. This food blogging thing kind of gets under your skin that way, it really does. So when I realized that my daughter's wonderful teacher was having a birthday, I said to her: "I'm a baker now, you know. What do you like to eat?" She replied "Fudge. Brownies. Chocolate chip cookies. Coconut." I figured that gave me all the information that I needed to find something suitable in the ultimate baking bible:

I considered making one of Dorie's many yummy-looking chocolate brownie recipes, but I really wanted to find something David would eat (i.e., not chocolate) since we're coming off a bit of a chocolate cookie streak that did nothing for him. I thought that something with coconut would be perfect, because it was specifically on the teacher's wish list, yet I wouldn't eat as much of it because I'm not a huge coconut fan. When I found Dorie's Chewy Chunky Blondies, I knew that I had hit the jackpot. Brownie-ish? Check. Chocolate chip cookie-ish? Check. Coconut-y? Check. Fudgey? Er, maybe if I undercook them a bit. Plus, I could omit the chocolate chips from part of the batter, which would leave a few for my sweet husband, who never, ever complains, even when I bake chocolate cookies every night for a month, or send him on missions for exotic ingredients like frozen puff pastry sheets.

These came together easily. They're brown sugar based, with featured ingredients such as walnuts, coconut, chocolate chips (which I swapped with white chocolate chips for David's side of the pan) and butterscotch chips. The result? A chewy, chunky blondie.



The birthday teacher gave these rave reviews. And when I was picking up the kids in the afternoon, other teachers stopped me in the hallway and said "Did you make those brownie things? They were awesome!" Oh yes, I was a rock star that day.

David liked his too. He said that all of these desserts are starting to blend together a bit, but in general, he'd rank these ahead of the Chipsters, but behind the Apple Cobbler and the Peach Galette. Still, this is a great pan cookie/brownie option for those times that you feel like easing up on the chocolate a bit, while still enjoying plenty of chewy, chunky goodness.