Cheesecake Brownies

I love cheesecake. I love brownies. I really love cheesecake brownies, which I was first introduced to in the college dining hall. My school had pretty heinous cafeteria food, but for some reason they had some outstanding desserts, including the chocolate death cake, the chocolate devil's food cake roll, and their cheesecake brownies, which were made with a pleasant looking swirl and were normally served on chicken finger day (which was also spring roll and hot and sour soup day, for some reason).

I was planning on making some brownies for the guys at work, since random acts of baked goods are always appreciated (and, uhm, it's review time) when I saw the 3-lb brick of cream cheese I bought at Costco a while back. Now, being somewhat devoted to responsible financial habits lately, I've restrained myself from buying a springform pan (even though the one I want is a mere $12) in lieu of going snowboarding, since the stuff is all going to melt soon with this warm weather we've been having. Anywho, soon-expiring 3-lbs of cream cheese and no springform pan? Cheesecake brownies. Gotta use it or else I'll lose it. Recipe: Joycomes to the rescue as always, except theirs doesn't include the happy swirl. I generally followed the recipe exactly, except I creamed the butter and sugar first, since that seems to give me a brownie density that I like.

Apparently, a lot of people have never had cheesecake brownies before. The work guys (I'm a programmer... I work with guys) were slightly befuddled, but like most people, they love cheesecake and they love brownies and consequently, they loved cheesecake brownies. Three-quarters of them were gone before lunch, and the rest disappeared shortly thereafter. They are extremely fudgey and chewy on the bottom, and the cheesecake is light and fluffy and a good contrast.

In experimentation news (aka "must use this damn cream cheese" news), these are also excellent if you substitute the vanilla extract in the cheesecake with some mint extract instead, making mint cheesecake brownies. They are kind of liked the baked-good equivalent of York Peppermint Patties.

Gingersnaps for Tracy

Traveling was always an ordeal for my younger sister Tracy in our prepubescent days. Car rides were pure treachery for all of us: would she puke? Would she get out of the car in time? Could we get to our destination before we had to stop so she could run out of the car and vomit on the side of the road? Oh shit, a bump! She doesn't look so good.

At some point, my parents, either too cheap or too skeptical for the dramamine and other drugs, decided the best way to calm Tracy's stomach was by force-feeding her gingersnaps. Ginger is well-known to be good for stomach ailments, and the only way they could get it into the kid's system was via cookies. From then on, travel days began with a box of gingersnaps on the kitchen table, and we couldn't leave until she'd eaten about a quarter of the box. The rest were toted along as puke insurance of sorts, and the moment she started looking queasy Mom would start stuffing them down Tracy's throat while she sat there with one eye closed (another "trick" for helping motion sickness). I don't know if it actually helped or not - you'll have to ask her, but she's off cavorting around eastern Europe right now.

I'd have been happy to never eat or see gingersnaps again, but there I was, all ready to make chocolate chip cookies, when I realized I had no chocolate chips. There's a deterrent if I ever had one. I started poking through Joyand realized I had everything I needed to make gingersnaps; given Tracy was leaving for Prague the next day, I figured I'd make some in her honor. They turned out a bit cakier than I'd have liked, but I still ate them for breakfast for the next few days.

The Mixer Test

I tested out my fancypants new mixer(thanks again, Z) for the first time by making a batch of a classic - basic brownies. I got the recipe out of the Kitchen Aid Great Baking and Morebook that Z's mom got me for Christmas (it was actually a happy coincidence), which details step-by-step exactly at what speed and for how long to run your Kitchenaid mixer while baking things (apparently, they're convinced their mixers take half the time of other mixers and whatnot). Being the sort of person who's a stickler for such exact instructions, I followed them to the letter and they turned out the best brownies I've ever made. I wonder if letting the machine decimate the eggs and butter and sugar into fluffy goodness really makes that big of a difference... and now I'm never going to know otherwise because I'm convinced these Kitchenaid folks do not screw around! Super-fudgey, awesome chewy brownies. Okay, they were actually a bit sweet for me, but I now know how to achieve my favorite brownie texture in the universe. I gave them away to avoid getting cavities (I might already have some, as I haven't been to the dentist in three years or so, but that's another story). More mixer experiments are sure to come.

To test out Z's brand new food processor(I have the same one without the nifty wide-mouth feed tube), we made a batch of latkes. Well, mostly, I made a batch of latkes because Z was helping a touring Japanese cyclist who hadn't had a tune-up since he started his trip with a new bike in Canada three months ago. Yosuke, best of luck and we hope you make it to Tierra del Fuego in one piece and well-fed! Frying latkes is a lot of fun, though I forgot how fast potatoes turn a sickly pink color after you shred them.

In a final meal recommendation, the Broccoli Soup with Cheddar from Epicurious is really good. You might want to cut the stock a little. I have this 2-lb block of Tillamook sharp cheddar (yes, from Costco), and broccoli was on sale at Whole Foods, and I really wanted ONE of my cookbooks to have some directions for me to mix it together to make some cream-laden cheesy soup, but alas - I had to turn to the internet.

Next up: adventures in herb growing (culinary herbs, silly), more mixer fun, and more complaining about trying to cook through all of my cookbooks.

Holiday Food

Christmas came and went, and nary a blog entry was written, even though I finished shopping the night after I wrote my procrastination post predicting gloom and doom. To prepare for that night of furious internet shopping, I made Dduk Bok-kee with a recipe from Slashfood. Now, to be honest, I've been buying these little rice cake things for almost two years now, though I never called them anything but "rice cakes" (even though they bear no resemblance to the styrofoamy nightmares of my grade-school lunches), and I've always cooked them the same way - either dumped in soup or fried in some peanut oil with soy sauce with a healthy few squirts of sriracha or chili-garlic sauce. Although pretty tasteless on their own, they are awesomely chewy with a smooth, meaty texture and easily take on the flavors of whatever you're cooking them in. I had no idea of their place or origin in culinary world, and decided to do some investigating last week since I didn't feel like making soup or my generic fry-dish.

Apparently, in Korean, these rice cakey things are called duk, or dduk (the "dd"sound is one that is beyond my comprehension level, so don't ask me). Us Chinese folks apparently eat them too, but I didn't find a name that I could remember. Lots of Asian-folk eat them around the new year, and in Korea they're served as comfort food in dishes like Dduk Bok-kee, which is what I made. Spicy, sweet, chewy - how can you go wrong? You can go find dduk in the refrigerated section of your local Asian market. I'm itching to make some with fish balls instead of beef, which is apparently another traditional way of serving them.

In other news, I made my grandma biscotti for Christmas, using a recipe from Joy of Cooking(apparently she hasn't touched any of the presents we've bought for her in the last five years or so, so a perishable favorite food seemed like a wiser investment). They turned out surprisingly well, though I found that Joy's recommended bake time of 10 minutes on each side after the initial slicing was waaaay too much, as my little dudes started burning.

A few nights ago I made Cream of Spinach soup from Joy and found it to be pretty lacking. Admittedly, I used frozen spinach and I didn't puree it all the way since I'm not a fan of totally pureed soups (and I wanted to test out the cheap immersion blender I found in my cabinet and it wasn't very... efficient). However, after letting it sit for a few days and then sprinkling a pile of parmesan on it, I have to say it's actually pretty good.

In Christmas news, my family must think I'm an alcoholic because I got wine stoppers and a cocktail shaker. My youngest sister got me a book about cooking seafood, I kidnapped another cookbook from my mom's dollar-bin books cabinet (don't ask), Z's mom got me silicone baking sheets and two more cookbooks, and Z got me The Mixer. I have the best boyfriend ever. Lots of baking to come in 2008!

Last Week's Projects

I'm a terrible procrastinator. It's T-minus seven days until Christmas, and I currently have in my possession half of a present for one person on my list. My list is ten people long. I have a package coming in the mail on Thursday which will take care of two more people on the list, so officially I have a quarter of my Christmas shopping done with seven days to go. Every year, this last week or so before Christmas becomes a completely stressful time that I could have easily avoided were I not such a terrible procrastinator. Last year I got Amazon Prime a week before Christmas to get everything where it needed to be on time; this year, I'm trying to figure out how to get $100 worth of stuff from a site so that I can qualify my order for free two-day shipping (somehow, Amazon does not have everything I need).

What the hell am I doing writing a blog entry, you ask? Procrastinating, of course. What was I doing yesterday? Falling down a mountain repeatedly on a snowboard. The day before? Oh, playing video games and cleaning my apartment. I'm awful. We're going to keep this one short, so I can actually attempt to do some internet shopping and place some orders because I am terrified of going anywhere near a mall this time of year. My desperate last minute shopping will be done in private to preserve my own sanity, thank you very much.

A short sidenote which will surely become a more lengthy blog entry in the future: I've figured out I have this problem. I have a bad case of completism. If you give me a cookbook, I get this awesomely stupid idea that I want to cook everything in it. This is why I keep making things from Joy of Cooking even though I have a pile of other cookbooks, which I didn't even want to buy because I haven't cooked everything from all of the cookbooks I have. I have a lot of problems.

Anyway, I made a Kale and Potato Gratin from Joy on Monday night, which didn't turn out so well. I'm not sure what happened but the potatoes on top of it never cooked through, even after an hour in the oven. I gave those to Ralphy and ate the rest of it and it was all right. No pictures, because I also found out my camera was dead. Oops.

On Wednesday night I made Snickerdoodles, also from Joy. I think I left them in the oven a little too long. Also, when they say to space those things 2.5-inches or so apart on the sheet, they are not fucking around! I had a batch of hexagonal cookies. They had so much butter in them that I calculated the per-cookie butter amount, which was 1/18 stick of butter per cookie, so a breakfast of four cookies (yes, I eat cookies for breakfast sometimes [and the rest of the time I eat organic omega-3 poop-city fiber cereal]) is 2/9 of a stick of butter, which is kind of a lot, I think.


On Thursday I made fried rice (yes, I followed the recipe from Joy, that's how incompetent I am at being Chinese, plus I have the aforementioned completism problem) with leftover rice from the Keema Alu. It was kind of gross (partially because I didn't use enough scallions, since I was picking them out of Z's garden and he doesn't have very many so I didn't want to pick them all), so I doused it with soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, and sriracha, and it was marginally better but still gross. I guess I need to work on that one.

This week, I'm not letting myself cook until I'm done with my Christmas shopping. At this rate, you might not hear from me again until next year.