Chocolate Cranberry & Almond Brownies

Not having made brownies in over ten years, I decided to give it a whirl.

Meet the Ingredients

Cream butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla and elmond extract
In a double boiler, melt some chocolate. In this case, some blocks of unsweetened baker's chocolate and some semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Add chocolate to butter mixture.

I understand baking power is a leavening agent of some sort. I threw some in for good measure.

Then I added flour, almonds, dried cranberries and skor toffee chips.

Bake at 350 till a toothpick says otherwise. 45 minutes for me.

Then for some reason, I decided I wanted cold brownies, so I inverted them on a sheet and...

Put them in the freezer for an hour.

Voila. Decadent. Perhaps a bit too much sugar and the sugar's caramelized a bit too much on the bottom.The cranberry is a really nice contrast with all of the sweet. A little bit of orange would probably go well too.I used sliced almonds, so they're hard to taste in there. Almond chunks or walnuts next time.

Crème Brûlée

I borrowed a bunch of cookbooks from the library for Christmas time. One of the books was by Julia Child. I had some leftover cream from making bread pudding and decided to attempt to make Julia's crème brûlée from it. I love ordering this dessert from a restaurant, but have always been too intimidated to make it. I made some minor modifications from the original recipe (omitted a few steps and didn't use orange zest). Here's what happened:


Stirred together cream and vanilla extract in a saucepan and brought to a simmer.




Beat egg yolks and sugar together.




Gradually stirred the cream mixture into the egg mixture. You're supposed to go slowly in order to avoid coming out with scrambled eggs.
Poured the combined mixture into ice cream bowls. I don't have ramekins.



Put the bowls in baking dishes that were filled with water. The water keeps the oven steamy and moist inside.




Took the bowls out of the oven when the custards were set, about half an hour. Then put the custards in the fridge to chill for about 4 hours.




Sprinkled brown sugar on top of the custards.




Time to form the crust. This can be done either with a blowtorch or underneath a broiler. My dad has a blowtorch, however I don't know where it's been and what he's used it for in the past, so I decided to go with the broiler method.

Put the bowls back in the oven and turned the broiler on. I set the rack in the middle of the oven and sat and watched the sugar turn colour. Took the bowls out after the sugar darkened in colour, a few minutes.




Rich creamy goodness!




The custard part of the crème brûlée tasted really good, however the crust wasn't exactly what I had hoped for. The crust was hard and provided a nice contrast to the creamy custard, but the sugar didn't really caramelize. It was still powdery in some spots, and um... very very brown in other spots. I may have put too much sugar on top. I think the next time I try this, I'll use less sugar for the crust. A blowtorch might also be helpful for precision browning.

Apple Sauce

When I was a kid my grandmother always used to make homemade apple sauce. When I was in Toronto last week, I asked her how to make it. Turns out it's super easy.


First you take your apples. I used granny smith, because everyone knows they are the best kind of apples.


I peeled the apples, chopped them up and threw them in a pot with some water. You don't need a lot of water, if you use too much the sauce will end up being super runny. You can add some sugar too if you want (white or brown). I chose not to because I figure there's enough sugar in everything else these days.


From there all you do is bring the whole thing to a boil and stir it occasionally until the apples turn to mush.


And at the end of it all you have some apple sauce! A tasty treat! I'd make some pork chops to go with if it was only about 40 degrees warmer outside. Winter sucks for the bbq. :(

Super secret mango pudding

Second pan of mango pudding (first one was pretty much finished at the potluck)

Tina hosted a potluck and I was obliged to bring my signature dish. No, it's not made from powder. That is insulting! No, I didn't get the recipe off the internet. No, it's not an old family recipe passed down through the generations. I made the recipe myself! No, you can't have the recipe. I'll give you a hint though:

Secret ingredient

It was quite well received, despite the mango pudding not in its most amazing form, as the coconut milk I used had congealed and left a white film on the top, but it tasted fine. Most of the pan I brought was finished, which is good b/c I wouldn't know what to do with all the leftovers, considering that I had a whole second pan. I've realized that I can pick up girls, or at least greatly impress them, with this dish, and I could open a mango pudding store next to my Indian restaurant.