GITK - Cloud Nine Brownies

No picture. I can't find my camera. And I had Isabella and Jasper in the kitty strait jacket last night to clip their claws. Oh well, it must be here somewhere.

So today's recipe is one that I think originally came from a package of Ghiradelli White Chocolate chips. I got it from my really cool housemate in 1996. (Linds was really born in the entirely wrong time. She should have reached the age of majority in the 60s. A true hippy in her heart, gov't wonk to the outside world). She made the brownies one day and I thought they were fabulous so I asked her for the recipe. She gladly gave it to me. Of course, I didn't know any better and started making the darn things once a month or so. It took me a while to learn that one probably shouldn't make a recipe one got from a friend, FOR the friend. I think I'd be a bit upset if the situation were reversed, especially if the other person made the recipe better than I did!

Anyway, this is really just a shit-load of white and semi-sweet chocolate chip cookies held together by the absolute least amount of batter possible. It really shouldn't work but somehow it does. But, be warned, these suckers are incredibly, INCREDIBLY rich. And you need a double-boiler. I bought myself one for the sole purpose of making these brownies. I've never used it for anything else.

Cloud Nine Brownies

½ c. butter
2 c. white chocolate chips
2 eggs
½ c. sugar (really, only ½ a cup, I swear!)
1 t. Vanilla
1 c. flour
1 c. semi sweet chocolate chip cookies

1) preheat oven to 325 degrees and grease an 8" square pan
2) in top of double boiler over low heat, melt butter with 2/3 c. white chocolate chips, stirring constantly, until smooth. Remove from heat and set aside.
3) beat eggs and sugar until very pale and thick.
4) blend in melted mixture and vanilla.
5) stir in flour just until combined.
6) stir in remaining white chocolate chips and the semi-sweet chips
7) spread into prepared pan
8) bake for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out almost clean
9) cool before cutting into small squares (really, REALLY rich)


I ended up making a double batch of this and baked it in a 9.5x13 inch glass pan. I forgot that I should have reduced the heat to 300 degrees because of the glass pan, so I did that late into the cooking time when I realized the edges were getting really crispy and the center was still really soft. I've cut out all the edge pieces so far and have them in a container for work. Now I just have to cut the center section. I have no idea how this all holds together. It's an ooey-gooey mess and I know people will think it's under cooked. But, good heavens! All that butter and next to no flour? Craziness!

Hmmm, here's the recipe on the Guittard website but I don't actually recall ever hearing of this company before. Have I missed something?

GITK - Almost Better than Sex Cake

I have been putting off baking this cake because I haven't made it in at least 10 years and I was actually a bit intimidated. I first tried this cake when I was a freshman at Drew University and worked at this really cool coffee-house/cabaret on campus called "The Other End" (and it's still there!) One of the managers at the time (Miranda? Marissa?) made a cake by this name. It was delicious and, truly, almost better than sex (almost). I never got her recipe and when I left Drew at the end of my freshman year, I assumed I'd never have it again.

But, during the holidays of 1992, a client of the company I worked for brought over a cake that tasted just like the one I had at Drew. I was amazed and thrilled. And she was kind enough to give me the recipe. (Remember, this was WAY before the Internet. Google "almost better than sex cake" and you would be amazed how many recipes come up. Interestingly enough, most of them are different from my recipe. I did, however, find at least one hit with a similar recipe). Here's mine:

Almost Better than Sex Cake

1 box Yellow Cake mix
1 3oz box of Instant Vanilla Pudding
½ C. Oil
½ C. Water
3 Eggs, beaten
8 oz. Sour cream
4 oz. German Chocolate, grated
1 C. chopped pecans
6 oz. Butterscotch chips

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2) Grease and flour a tube pan (grease and flour well!)
3) Mix together cake mix and pudding mix.
4) add oil, water and eggs. Beat on high speed for 2 minutes (or by hand until pale yellow and smooth - about 10 minutes of continuous stirring. Find a good show on TV)
5) Add sour cream. Stir until just mixed.
6) Add remaining ingredients, one at a time, stirring just until each is mixed in.
7) spread batter into prepared pan
8) bake for 55-65 minutes
9) cool for 15 minutes then remove from pan
10) cool completely.

This cake doesn't need any frosting - it's rich enough and moist enough on its own. Here are some tips - I highly recommend a rotary grater. I never realized how much chocolate I lost due to melting and breakage when I grated it by hand. I was amazed how much grated chocolate I ended up with! (I also ended up grating the pecans. The ones I bought were still in pretty big pieces and I don't have a chopper. I thought I'd be able to chop the nuts using the bigger of the grater barrels. I was wrong. It'll be interesting to see how it tastes tomorrow.)

Another tip - Really make sure to grease and flour the pan. I used butter this time and made sure I covered the pan thickly and that there was flour on every possible part. For the first time ever, the cake came out in one entire piece. None of it stayed on the bottom of the pan.

I will admit that I used Fat-Free sour cream this time. I hadn't planned on it but when I was at the store, only the fat free was available in an 8oz. container. I didn't need any extra sour cream floating around my 'fridge, that's for sure!

In addition to the fat-free sour cream, if you wanted to go lite on this recipe, you can use Egg Beaters instead of whole eggs and applesauce instead of the oil. But, honestly, with everything else, what's the point?

GITK – No Bake Cookies

I found this recipe in the second grade in the companion comic book to the children’s learning show "Mulligan Stew”. (I still remember one of the songs from the show, too: “Fad foods and quick diets/are bad for you so don’t try it/They’ll slow you down (slow you down)/and that is why (that is why)/they’re no good for you.)

This recipe soon became a family favorite. My dad loved them right off the bat and called them “Pods”. I started calling them Cow Patties, for obvious reasons. This was one of the first recipes that I learned to make all by myself. The ingredients were always in the house and I probably made them once a month for years. These days I usually spread the stuff in a pan because I don’t have the patience (or the space) to drop them on waxed paper. There are always more, however, if you go with the drop method.

I made these cookies/bars last night but I’m not taking them to work. I didn’t have all the right ingredients so I experimented. I didn’t have cocoa (and the nearest CVS didn’t have any either. Crazy!), so I ended up using a 1lb. bag of gourmet cocoa mix that one of Teach’s students gave him last year. Turns out, there was not enough sugar and too much cocoa so the sugar mixture didn’t crystallize/caramelize/whatever it was supposed to do the right way. I ate some for breakfast this morning and it wasn’t bad per se. But I’m not about to bring the results in for work.

That’s the other thing about this particular recipe – unless you actually are making the cookies, they really aren’t terribly appetizing looking. Kids, I think, would have a lot more fun with these than adults, and it’s an easy recipe for them to learn. But, like I said, I’m revisiting old standby and old favorite recipes and this one brings lots of happy memories.

No-Bake Cookies (From Mulligan Stew)

2 C. Sugar
¼ C. Cocoa
½ C. Milk
½ C. butter
1 t. vanilla
½ C. peanut butter (chunky or smooth0
3 C. quick cook oats

1. In a heavy saucepan, mix together sugar, cocoa, milk and butter.
2. Cook over medium heat until mixture starts to boil.
3. Remove pan from heat and cool for 1 (one) minute.
4. Add vanilla, peanut butter and oatmeal.
5. Stir completely until peanut butter is melted and oatmeal is coated
6. Drop by teaspoonful onto wax paper.
7. Cool completely
8. Store in an airtight container

GITK – Fabulous Fudge

This is my favorite fudge recipe. I have no idea where it came from. I think I may have found it sometime in the early 90’s when I was looking for good holiday recipes. I have no idea. My earliest memory of using this particular fudge recipe was in 1994 when I made pounds upon pounds when I was home for Christmas from graduate school. I was helping my mother with her Christmas Goodie plates that she always made and this was a new addition. (My brother always used to be the fudge guy. That was his thing – he always helped my mom make it and I made the cookies and the cakes. I don’t know when that stopped.) In 1994, I experimented with all kinds of chips. At that time, Hershey’s was making Raspberry Chocolate chips and Mint chocolate chips and both of these made absolutely outstanding fudge. The hint of flavor with the chocolate was simply scrumptious. I found that milk chocolate chips made much softer fudge – it didn’t set up well and had to remain in the ‘fridge. I’m sure I tried peanut butter chips (but probably not butterscotch. I’m not a huge butterscotch fan.), but I don’t remember how the PB chips worked out.

Last year I made this fudge for the people I support at work and then I made a batch for the office holiday party. I found that Nestlé has a variety of swirled chips and I chose the mint swirled ones for the office party. Unlike the (sadly) discontinued Hershey’s version, which was just chocolate chips infused with mint extract, the Nestlé chips were half chocolate and half some kind of mint stuff. I don’t know if it was green colored, mint-flavored white chocolate or what. What I found, however, was that these, too, made much softer fudge so by the end of the party, the fudge that was left sort of melded into a blob in the bottom of the bowl. But, it still tasted good!

This last time, I used Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Chips and I’m not sure I was really thrilled with how they turned out. Now I’m a big fan of bittersweet chocolate and the fudge was a hit at the office (I made two batches and ended up with one piece left at the end of the day, and I cut small pieces), but I thought perhaps the chocolate was too strong for those people who prefer milk chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate. The sugar and marshmallows didn’t sweeten the bitterness as much as I thought they might. But, the fudge was still good. So, without further ado, here is my recipe for Fabulous Fudge:

Ingredients:

2 T. butter
⅔ C. Evaporated Milk
1½ C. granulated sugar
2 C. mini marshmallows
1½ C. chocolate chips
½ C. pecans or walnuts (optional)
1 t. vanilla

1. Line an 8x8 (or 9x9) inch pan with foil. Set aside.
2. In a heavy saucepan over medium heat, stir together butter, sugar and milk.
3. Stirring constantly, bring mixture to a boil and boil (while continuing to stir) for 4 minutes.
4. Remove from heat and add remaining ingredients.
5. Stir mixture until marshmallows and chips are completely melted.
6. Pour mixture into prepared pan.
7. Chill until firm.
8. Cut into bite-sized pieces

Grieving in the Kitchen

So.

My husband’s best friend died last week. He died suddenly after a brief illness, from which he appeared to be recovering. He died before I got a chance to see him in the hospital, even though he asked about me. I’ve heard a lot of how highly he thought of me and I hope he didn’t think I didn’t care. Because I did.

So.

We buried my husband’s best friend today. There were so many things I wanted to say but didn’t know if I should. His wife didn’t approve of any of his friends, especially my husband and, tangentially, me. She had never met me before the wake, but she made her opinion of me known. Based on what, I’m really not sure and I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.

So.

My husband’s best friend is dead and we are grieving. Teach is grieving by not grieving and constantly talking about how he’s not grieving and how he’s waiting for the storm to hit. I’m waiting, too. In the meantime, I’m grieving by revisiting a bunch of recipes that I used to make all the time. My husband’s best friend was a chef and it seems fitting that I’m retreating to the kitchen to bake away my grief. Of course, Teach will not partake of any of my creations as he has lost over 80 pounds since our wedding in July 2006 and I’ve made the conscious decision to not cut calories on any of these recipes. I’m making them the way they were written, the way I used to make them before I worried about fat and calories and cholesterol.

So.

Let the baking, and the grieving, and hopefully, the healing, begin.

In Memoriam ...

When Great Trees Fall

by Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
He existed. He existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For he existed.