I: Ice Cream Sundae Brownies

I had a very lovely Valentine's Day this year. I got to spend it with my boyfriend whom I've been with since forever. His name is Stomach. We went on our traditional Valentine's double date with our two best friends, Ice-Cream and Brownie.  This year those two had some big news: THEY GOT HITCHED!!!

What actually happened was that I made a lovely 'singles' meal with my roommates.  The menu included a hearty salad and pasta dish with a scrumptious batch of Ice Cream Sundae Brownies ( la pièce de résistance ) for dessert. And please understand that these are not regular brownies with a scoop of ice cream on the side--the ice cream gets included in the batter, creating an even more fudgilicious and decadent texture...AMAZING!!!!!!!!!    

This week I opted to not make the letter 'I' recipe I had previously selected from one of my cookbooks. I did not find it particularly interesting and it was not as fitting for Valentine's Day as these brownies.  Instead I decided to adapt a recipe I found on another food blog called Picky Palate. It is a really easy, time saving recipe because it uses brownie mix from the box which was great since I was planning on making multiple dishes that evening. I made a few changes from the blogger's original recipe:

1) Her recipe requested more oil and an extra egg than the instructions on my box of brownie mix. At first I was not sure if we were using a different type of mix or if she made these changes in order to adapt the recipe to the inclusion of the ice cream. She also did not include any water (because of the ice cream) but I added a little bit otherwise it would have been impossible to mix.

2)   I chopped a block of chocolate into big pieces instead of using chocolate chips. The chocolate doesn't really melt in the brownies so it was nice finding big chunks of it when taking a bite.  

3) I didn't add any chocolate fudge sauce. I didn't have any available and although this might have been a tasty addition, the brownies were so fudgy and barely baked on the inside as is.

4) She used Ben and Jerry's Phish Food ice cream. I used a triple chocolate flavour but I think you can really play around with that if you want to.

5) I topped them with a sprinkle of icing sugar--do it!

These were so amazing paired with raspberries. They are the perfect comfort food for winter and I suggest you don't wait until next Valentine's Day to try them. Enjoy!

A taste of Glasgow

At the moment I am really lucky that I have four-day weekends and that I am somewhere in the world where the distance between destinations is relatively small.  I hope to do a bit of travelling while I am in Europe and I thought I would experiment with a section on this blog that would be a photo diary dedicated to the things I see.  This post has very little to do with food and might be a bit off topic for Alphabake, but there is a lot I want to share, including these photos from my day trip to Glasgow. I hope you enjoy them!     

 

H: Hazelnut Dacquoises

Last weekend I had a lovely time in Manchester where I was visiting my friends Ailsa and Dave. It was so nice catching up and just taking it easy. They were also pet sitting so there were lots of cuddles to go around from Monty the cat and Mia the dog. I didn't get a chance to do any baking that weekend but thankfully I have a recipe and evidential photos for the hazelnut dacquoises I made a few weeks back when I was still in London. 

Once again I paid a visit to the pages of The Williams-Sonoma Baking Book: Essential Recipes for Today's Home Baker for this recipe. It is a really good book with a diverse selection of dishes (that all start with a variety of letters in the alphabet--perfect!) so it will probably be featured on here a few more times.  In this version of the recipe the dacquoises are prepared like cookies but there are recipes around where single tart-shape is formed; I am not sure which version is more traditional.
 
A more detailed description of this version is that it is a sandwich of two meringues with a hazelnut flavoured pastry cream in the centre. The yield is only 8 cookies (16 meringues) and although they were delicious, a lot of effort went into making them. One has to roast and de-skin the hazelnuts, bake the meringues, cook up the pastry cream, and then put everything together. When I copied down the recipe before I left home, I forgot to record the recipe for pastry cream that's at the back of the book.  Luckily I was able to find a recipe on the Williams-Sonoma website but I am not sure if it produces the same amount as the recipe in the book.  I am only mentioning this because there was A LOT of filling leftover. One is supposed to add extra ingredients to the pastry cream. It didn't seem like it was lacking in flavour but maybe it would have been better if the 'pastry cream' to 'extras' ratio was a bit higher on the 'extras' side.  So if you were to make these you could either halve the pastry cream recipe or keep it as is and just use what is leftover as topping for..say..pancakes? (mmmmmm...) Also, the recipe says to keep the dacquoises refrigerated but another option is freezing them. They are generally quite chewy but using the freezer gives them a bit of an extra crunch which is nice too.

I made these around New Year's Eve which I think was a very fitting occasion. They are decadent yet delicate and would be perfect for a holiday party. I am just a bit ashamed that I have taken so long to create a post for them. I promise that from now on I am going to try to tighten the gap in between the baking and posting processes just in case anyone in the nearby vicinity wants to try any of the leftovers. :-)