Weekly Baking Experiment
Again, will be gone tonight, so baking happened last night, on my last choir-free Thursday night of the year.
Bakers: Myself, Ernie, Soupy
Recipe: Guinness Brownies
Music: Ernie playing the piano, because there wasn't really work enough for three people once the prep work was done.
Problems: Melting chocolate is not precisely difficult, but it requires a rather more elaborate set-up and more mess than I'm used to. I boiled water in a big skillet and set the smaller saucepan with the chocolate in that, since I don't have the right pans to jury-rig a halfway proper double-boiler. Worked well, just a lot of fuss.
Improvisations: The Andersons cannot be convinced to allow baked goods to cool at room temperature because they are weird. When I wasn't looking, they put the hot brownies in the fridge to make them cool down faster. I have no idea if this is bad practice, or not, but I oppose it on principle because it's a departure from the recipe, which is excusable in cooking but in baking can mean disaster. Also, this fridge-cooling thing of theirs means that our home-made chocolate-chip cookies are always as hard as rocks. I seem to be the only one in the house who is bothered by this. I've never had these brownies before, so I don't know of the refrigeration did anything to them, but they were still yummy, so I guess I should let it go.
End result: So it turns out that stout and chocolate are a match made in heaven. Especially when no fewer than four types of chocolate are involved. If you ask me, anyway. The mother-in-law didn't like them, and said they tasted strongly of alcohol, which she hates. I don't see how that's possible, since I'm pretty sure the alcohol would have cooked out in the oven, and the only non-chocolate flavor I could detect was that of stout, which was mild and complimented the chocolate nicely. *shrug*
Of note: Ernie's repeated and unsuccessful attempts to say "Mount Vesuvius" (the brownies did that thing where they expand up into a little volcano which collapses back to normal when they cool a bit).
Also, a rather inspired monologue by myself, delivered to Soupy, on how cooking is like normal life and baking is like journeying into fairyland, in that the rules don't always make very much sense but you follow them anyway because you're afraid of what will happen if you don't, and you frequently don't know you've broken a rule until you're being punished for it much later. Soupy's girlfriend could not be convinced that I had a perfectly reasonable point when she wandered in to find me waving a spatula and saying "So you beat it for all three minutes, even though the last two minutes don't seem to make a lick of difference, because if you don't, the fairies might be angry!"
Bakers: Myself, Ernie, Soupy
Recipe: Guinness Brownies
Music: Ernie playing the piano, because there wasn't really work enough for three people once the prep work was done.
Problems: Melting chocolate is not precisely difficult, but it requires a rather more elaborate set-up and more mess than I'm used to. I boiled water in a big skillet and set the smaller saucepan with the chocolate in that, since I don't have the right pans to jury-rig a halfway proper double-boiler. Worked well, just a lot of fuss.
Improvisations: The Andersons cannot be convinced to allow baked goods to cool at room temperature because they are weird. When I wasn't looking, they put the hot brownies in the fridge to make them cool down faster. I have no idea if this is bad practice, or not, but I oppose it on principle because it's a departure from the recipe, which is excusable in cooking but in baking can mean disaster. Also, this fridge-cooling thing of theirs means that our home-made chocolate-chip cookies are always as hard as rocks. I seem to be the only one in the house who is bothered by this. I've never had these brownies before, so I don't know of the refrigeration did anything to them, but they were still yummy, so I guess I should let it go.
End result: So it turns out that stout and chocolate are a match made in heaven. Especially when no fewer than four types of chocolate are involved. If you ask me, anyway. The mother-in-law didn't like them, and said they tasted strongly of alcohol, which she hates. I don't see how that's possible, since I'm pretty sure the alcohol would have cooked out in the oven, and the only non-chocolate flavor I could detect was that of stout, which was mild and complimented the chocolate nicely. *shrug*
Of note: Ernie's repeated and unsuccessful attempts to say "Mount Vesuvius" (the brownies did that thing where they expand up into a little volcano which collapses back to normal when they cool a bit).
Also, a rather inspired monologue by myself, delivered to Soupy, on how cooking is like normal life and baking is like journeying into fairyland, in that the rules don't always make very much sense but you follow them anyway because you're afraid of what will happen if you don't, and you frequently don't know you've broken a rule until you're being punished for it much later. Soupy's girlfriend could not be convinced that I had a perfectly reasonable point when she wandered in to find me waving a spatula and saying "So you beat it for all three minutes, even though the last two minutes don't seem to make a lick of difference, because if you don't, the fairies might be angry!"