Chunky Walnut Brownies

I don't think I've ever lived through a colder winter than this year's. It's pretty crazy. I remember teasing my sister for having to deal with Hanover's brutally long, cold, and snowy winters, and now I'm having to deal with them myself.  Karma, I guess? I don't think I really deserve it, and even if I do, this is just too much.  Seriously, it's beyond cold and despite the birds chirping outside my bedroom window at 6:30 in the morning (how are they even alive?!), it doesn't look like spring is coming anytime soon. All I can do now is keep warm as best I can and thank my lucky stars that I invested in my L.L. Bean parka last year (I thought it was excessive and had buyer's remorse for a while, because when does it ever get that cold in NYC, right?).

Since its been so cold lately, all I seem to want to make right now are really quick and easy comfort treats (this dulce de leche cake being a notable exception). All I want are giant chocolate chip cookies and hot fudge sundaes and warm brownies...BROWNIES! I hadn't made a batch of brownies in an awfully long time, and they seemed like exactly the type of indulgent comfort food I was craving. There's just something about brownies that makes them completely irresistible. I had that initial spark, and there was no doubt about it. I needed a big pan of brownies.

Artpark Brownies

I've been working on making some changes in my life.  The biggest, and change I'm most nervous and excited about, is my recent career change.  I've been feeling a little ambivalent about architecture lately.  I still love architecture and design, and I think I always will.  At the same time, however, this little interest I have for food and writing and such has been growing more and more over the last few months.  It's grown so much, that the thought of going back to graduate school to study architecture was just not sitting well with me anymore.  I figured that the best course of action would be to step aside from architecture for a bit and try something new for a while.  I embraced this decision whole-heartedly, and I actually landed a job at Random House, to work with the Clarkson Potter editorial team. I started this week, and while it's a major change, it's a change I'm very happy with so far.  I can't say I'm completely sure I know what I'm doing or where I'm planning on going with all of this, because I don't know, but I'm excited to find out and see what happens.

I've been reading a lot more food-related books lately, and I'm hoping to grow a nice little collection to match my growing cookbook collection.  One of the books I recently finished reading is Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table.  In this book, Ruth Reichl, a well-known food writer, shares memorable moments from her life and details how she came to love food.  The book is charming and funny, and makes you love food just as much as she does.  Scattered throughout her stories are the recipes from the defining moments in her life, and the recipe for these Artpark Brownies caught my eye immediately.  Ruth's brownies were known for being "the best in the world," so I knew that this was one recipe I had to try for myself.

Chewy Cocoa Brownies

I feel like I have been waiting for this post to happen for such a long, long, long time.  Since change of season took place, I've been obsessed with working with light seasonal flavors and fresh berries and all things pastel and pretty.  At the same time, however, there's been a part of me that's been feeling more and more neglected as time passes.  The more I worked with berries and lavender and vanilla, the more and more I kept craving chocolate.  It's been so long since I last posted anything with chocolate in it (this Double Chocolate Pound Cake from the beginning of April is my last recipe with any chocolate in it!), and my last post was the complete opposite of chocolate- Vanilla Bean Ice Cream!  As much as I love working with all these spring flavors, I felt like I was going to go crazy if I didn't have anything indulgent, rich, and full of chocolate soon.  

This past weekend, I took care of that problem in the best way possible- by making an enormous batch of rich, chocolatey brownies.  I hadn't made a batch of brownies in a really long time, so curing my chocolate fix with brownies seemed to be the perfect remedy.  There's just something so comforting about biting into a chilled fudge brownie, and I'll never get over the first taste of intense chocolate flavor to hit your mouth.  A good fudge brownie is a treat that I don't ever see myself turning down.  

Dulce de Leche Brownies

GUYS THE SUPER BOWL IS THIS SUNDAY!!!!  Don't mistake the all-caps and exclamation points for some kind of extreme interest in this Sunday's upcoming event.  No, that would be very uncharacteristic of me.  You should know by now that I am the least interested person ever in regard to the Super Bowl and other football related events.  While I've never taken the time to understand the rules of the game, I also haven't been really interested in doing so.  I'm that guy that will sit in front of the television during a game (on the rare occasion that that actually happens) and just stare blankly at the screen in utter confusion.  I'll admit that I do like watching the replays though, but only because I like how all those lines get drawn on the screen over the playing field.  The only football games I've ever attended were those that I was forced to attend by my middle and high school band programs to play during halftime, and you can bet that the second we finished performing, I was outta there.  I had no desire to sit outside in the cold on a metal bleacher holding an instrument with metal keys for an additional hour and a half.  Fortunately for me, Columbia is really lacking in the football department (a quality all Columbians have come to accept and even embrace), so I didn't really feel like I was missing out on that defining feature of so many other college campuses.  I find that the half-time shows are often over-hyped and the few shows I've watched have been ok, but nothing mind-blowingly spectacular.  The fact that I only just found out LAST WEEK that the Super Bowl is being held at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey just goes to show how out of touch with the rest of America I really am.  

So why the all caps, you ask?  Why do I seem so excited about something which I am clearly, so obviously, NOT interested in?  Because I have something that I know all you Super Bowl/football fans will want as soon as you read this.  

Dulce de Leche Brownies.

Peppermint Brownie & Sugar Cookie Squares

We've made it to Day 5 of Cookie Week, and the 5 day before Christmas stretch!  I'm going to keep this post very brief, mostly because I have presents to wrap, cookie dough to make and refrigerate, and an entire house to help get in perfectly clean, tip top shape...by tonight!  I have family flying in this evening (they'll arrive very early tomorrow morning, like 7 or so), so tomorrow there will be zero time to get anything done before they arrive. We're in the final moments of rushing to get everything cleaned up and organized, and all the flour that I've gotten in every nook and cranny of my kitchen swept away.  That task alone is of epic proportions in itself!

Another very epic topic that is definitely less stress inducing would be these Peppermint Brownie and Sugar Cookie Squares.  I saw this bar cookie in this month's edition of Family Circle, and I immediately knew that I HAD to make it for myself.  Sugar cookie and brownie all in one bite?  What more could you ask for? 

Peppermint, I guess.  That's certainly a doable request.

Gluten-Free Pecan Fudge Brownies

It's July.  This means that it's the middle of the summer.  Um, what?  Seriously? Already!?  Sigh.  It's so incredibly hard to believe.  It feels like it was just yesterday that I was packing up my room back at school to move back home, yet that was over a month and a half ago.  I've just completed my fifth week at my internship, and it just seems crazy to think that it's just about halfway over.  Where does the time go!?  Time seems to be moving way too fast.  Too fast for my taste anyway.  In order to make myself feel a bit better about the fact that summer is half finished (meaning that it's almost time for school to start again...not that that's a bad thing of course!), I'm going to eat a brownie.  Brownies are one of those foods that just automatically make you feel good, and I love them.

These brownies are super special (no, not that kind of special, sheesh).  They are super fudgy, have toasted pecans mixed throughout, anddddd...they're gluten-free.  Don't believe me?  You'll just have to make them for yourself then, and I'm sure that, like me, you'll be amazed at the results.  Seriously.  You can't even tell that these brownies are gluten-free!  I don't have a problem with gluten, but I definitely am intrigued by gluten-free cooking, baking in particular.  I find it crazy that baked goods can manage to have structure and hold up well without the use of any flour, so I like to experiment from time to time with gluten-free baking.  The only thing is that, as you know by now, I'm too lazy to go out of my way to buy all sorts of specialty flours, and arrowroot powder, and all that other stuff.  I like simple gluten-free recipes that can be prepared with regular old ingredients that I have inside my kitchen.  These brownies, for instance, use cornstarch instead of flour, so this is my kind of gluten-free baking!  The fact that these brownies taste amazingly delicious only makes them even better!

Bacon Brownies

Geez, what happened to the lovely warm weather we were having in NY?!  I spent the last three days in nice light spring clothing only to wake up today to a cold, gray, and dreary kind of day.  It made me feel kind of sad, to say the least.  However, colder temperatures mean that you have an excuse to turn your ovens on and bake up something fiercely delicious.  Like brownies!  But first, make sure to chop up some bacon, fry it up, and throw it into the brownie batter before baking.  Brownies + Bacon.  Sounds kind of crazy, but trust me, this combination is anything but crazy.  It's the total opposite; really, I promise.  

One of my cousins left me a wall post on my Facebook a couple weeks ago saying that he had come across this recipe, and even though he thought it "sounded a little weird," that I should try it out.  I put it on my list of things to do (which is still growing longer and longer by the second...at least that's how it feels anyway).  As soon as I saw the wall post he left me, I knew I had to try the recipe out, for at least three reasons:  

1. Brownies are awesome.

2. Bacon is awesome.

and...

3. Nigella Lawson is awesome (I really just love her, she has this amazing way of writing about food that I just find incredible).

These brownies were obviously gonna get baked up sooner or later.  That list of three reasons was simply too compelling to ignore. 

Raspberry Cream Cheese Brownies

Brownies are one of those types of desserts that people seem to form strong opinions over.  Some like cake-like brownies, and others like dense fudgy brownies.  Personally, I love rich dense brownies, simply because I feel like the chocolate flavor comes through much better, since fudge brownie recipes call for real chocolate as opposed to cocoa powder.  Regardless of this fact, I will never turn down a brownie of any sort.  I mean, it would be silly to do such a thing.  Brownies are so easily adaptable and come in so many different flavor combinations that choosing a fudgy brownie over a cake brownie would simply be unfathomable.  Yes, just unfathomable.

There's something about the combination of brownies and cheesecake that people really seem to love...including me, obviously.  I may not be the biggest fan of cheesecake itself (although I do enjoy a small slice of plain cheesecake with raspberry topping every now and then), but when cheesecake gets baked into anything else, whether it's a muffin or a cupcake, or a brownie, like in this case, I think the combination is really just outstanding. 

Gluten-Free Fudge Brownies

This summer was pretty awesome.  Let me tell you about it.  I applied for and managed to successfully land an internship with the NYC Department of Buildings to work as a graphic arts intern with the Community Partnerships Division (they handle all the mayor's special projects).  These special projects included Urbancanvas, a project that is meant to help beautify construction sites by installing artwork on temporary construction protective structures (If you're in the NYC area, the specific projects I worked on are located on the MTA 2nd Avenue subway line construction sites, so check them out!); urbanSHED, which has the idea of replacing all of the city's unsightly wood and steel sidewalk sheds with completely new steel and polymer structures (they look SO GOOD); and NYC Cool Roofs, a project that promotes the cooling of NYC's rooftops by covering them in a white reflective coating to lower cooling costs and cut energy usage. Pretty cool stuff.

Fudgy Walnut Brownies

I've never been able to decide whether I prefer cakey or fudgy brownies.  Some people think fudgy brownies are too rich, while others think cakey brownies are too simple.  I think it's a silly debate.  They're both equally delicious, and I refuse to pick one over the other.  


So I made these.