Baking With Dorie: Brownie Buttons

It's been a year of Baking With Dorie. And what fun it has been: to get to know everyone in our small group & to bake through this wonderful book that I can't praise enough for the simplicity of its' recipes. It is absolutely, hands down, the best baking book I have ever used. Whether you are an amateur or a seasoned baker, this book is for you & I think everyone should own a copy!

These Brownie Buttons are, in Dorie's words, sensational. Fudgy yet light as air. Perfect for an any-time snack or a kids' party. I made mine with whole-wheat flour today:

Brownie Buttons

Page 106, Baking from my home to yours by Dorie Greenspan

Grated zest of 1/2 orange (optional)

1 tsp sugar (optional)

1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp all purpose flour

pinch of salt

1/2 stick butter, cut into 4 pieces

2.5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

1/3 cup (packed) light brown sugar

1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 large egg

For the glaze:

2 ounces white chocolate, finely chopped

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. 

Lightly butter two mini-muffin pans, each with a dozen cups, and place them on a baking sheet. 

If you are using the zest, combine the zest and sugar in a small  bowl rubbing them between your fingertips to blend; set aside. Whisk together salt and flour. 

Melt the butter, chocolate and brown sugar in a medium-sized heavy bottomed saucepan over very low heat, stirring frequently with a heatproof spatula and keeping an eye on the pan so nothing overheats or burns. When the mixture is smooth, remove from the heat and cool for a minute or two. 

Stir the vanilla, egg and zest into the chocolate mixture. When the mixture is well-blended, add the flour and stir only till it is incorporated. You should have a smooth, glossy batter. 

Spoon batter into 16 muffin cups, using about a teaspoon of batter to fill each cup 3/4 full. Put 1 tsp of water in each empty cup. 

Bake for 14-16 minutes, or until the tops of the buttons spring back when touched. Transfer pans to racks to cool for 3 minutes before releasing the buttons. Cool to room temperature. 

To make the glaze: Melt the chocolate in a small heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water. Stir constantly and don't leave the chocolate for even a minute. As soon as it is smooth, remove from heat. 

One by one dip the tops of the buttons in the chocolate, twirling the buttons so that you get a little swirl. Refrigerate 15 mins to set the glaze. 

Happy 1st Anniversary to all my fellow bakers! Thanks for being part of BWD this past year. 

Please check out the blogroll here to see everyone else's take on these adorable brownie buttons. Next up we're baking Honey Nut Scones. If you'd like to be part of our baking challenge, please drop me an email at needfulthings at ymail dot com. We'd love to have you bake along with us!

Baking With Dorie: Caramel-Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake

It is impossible to look through Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan and not stop to drool over the photos of this cake. A brownie base with salted peanuts and sticky, gooey, dripping caramel . . . it had my name all over it & so I was very happy to be able to pick the recipe for this weeks' Baking With Dorie challenge. 

It takes hardly any time to make the cake and it came out looking perfect, but it was cakier than the  super-moist, fudgy brownie I had been envisioning all along. It caved in while cooling, but Dorie already tells us to expect that it will. So, no surprises or panic attacks there.

Next up was the tricky part: making the Caramel. Needless to say, I've never made it from scratch before. Since I made this cake in a frightful hurry, at the eleventh hour, I completely forgot that I could have referred to David Lebovitz's post on how to make Caramel. And Elizabeth of Gluten-Free Baking 101 has added a wonderful step-by-step tutorial within her post this week - just in case you want to get some great visual tips on how to get it right.

Otherwise, Dorie's directions are very clear and guide you right through the process. The only thing was, my caramel took longer to cook than the 10 minutes she said it would. But that has mostly to do with the size of saucepan I used and how much heat I gave it. I really didn't want to burn the caramel since I had very little time to start from scratch all over again, so I watched it like a hawk for maybe 20 minutes. Meanwhile, I had fun doing the 'white plate test' every couple of minutes:

The fun part came next - mixing in the nuts and then pouring everything over the cake. Dorie recommends waiting till the caramel is completely cool before releasing the sides of the springform pan. But I just couldn't wait, because: 

a) I'm highly impatient

b) my kids were hovering around me like flies, wanting to poke their fingers into the cake that they just couldn't wait to eat (now I wonder where they get that from?)

c) I'm highly impatient. 

And this is what happens to impatient people who not only remove their cake from the pan but also slice it right away: 

Yup. Caramel Explosion. Never mind that it looks mouthwatering. 

Next time I'm going to have to listen to the wiser, saner Dorie and let things be. The wisdom in that would have been that the caramel would have set up a little, and some of it would have soaked through and made the cake very moist - almost fudgy. The next morning, this tasted somewhat like a chocolate-peanut version of a sticky-toffee pudding. Do I really need to say it was scrumptious!

One tip: Dorie suggests we don't dump the entire quantity of caramel over the cake and that we should be left with a lot more than we actually need. As usual she's spot on, so, don't be tempted. Less is definitely more as it will make your cake exceedingly sweet.

To check out what the other bakers did with this weeks' recipe, please check the blogroll here and here. Our next challenge, coming up on July 19, is the Creamiest Lime Cream Meringue Pie, chosen by Elizabeth of Gluten-Free Baking 101. If you'd like to join the challenge, please drop me an email. We'd love to have you bake along with us!

You can find the recipe for this cake on pages 264-5 of Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Or you can find it right here after the jump:

Brownie Love

I know I said just earlier today that I don't do the valentine thing. 

And I don't. 

I guess I've been bitten by the bug. Or maybe I simply needed an excuse to whip up some fudgy, chocolate  goodness. 

Either way, it's all good. 

Like my 5 yr old said this morning, "I know why you're always making stuff Mama - because it makes your hands happy". He's right. It makes my hands happy.