When life gives you snow....make brownies!

My backyard looks like this today
So I made these

We are expecting 18-24 inches of snow this weekend. We are not expecting BeanieDaddy to make it home from work tonight. So, to get us through the afternoon and into tomorrow I decided to make brownies. Brownies seem to be the forgotten child of the chocolate dessert family. At least they are here. I'm more apt to do a cake, or cupcake or candy or something else. Brownies are usually an afterthought for some reason.

But I knew I had the ingredients on hand (at least I was pretty sure) and a page from my Southern Living Christmas Cookbook with a menu for a coffee and chocolate party has been taunting me for weeks. However, I had to make some alterations. The recipe calls for bittersweet baking chocolate and I had semisweet. After doing a little investigation, I learned that you can add unsweetened cocoa to the semisweet chocolate and you would have something closer to bittersweet. Also, the recipe calls for 2 cups of semisweet chocolate morsels. I have had a bag of raspberry chocolate morsels in the pantry waiting for a home so I used them instead. The result: pure heaven. It turned into one of those desserts that is so yummy but a little too rich to eat too much at one time. The hope is that these will last a while.

Here is the full recipe with my changes.

Dark Chocolate Brownies
Adapted from 2008 Southern Living Christmas Cookbook
1 cup butter
8 ounces bittersweet baking chocolate squares
2 cups raspberry chocolate morsels, divided
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1 Tbs vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts, toasted
1 cup all-purpose flour, divided
1/2 teaspoon salt

Microwave butter, bittersweet chocolate, and 1 cup morsels in a 4-quart bowl at high 1 1/2 to 2 minutes or until chocolate is melted, stirring mixture every 30 seconds. Whisk in sugar, eggs and vanilla.

Toss together walnuts, 1 Tbs flour, and remaining 1 cup of morsels. Stir remaining four and salt into sugar mixture. Stir in walnut mixture. Spread batter into a greased 13- x 9-inch pan.

Bake at 350-degrees for 30-40 minutes or until edges begin to pull away from pan (a wooden pick inserted in center will not come out clean). Cool on a wire rack.

In addition to the brownies, I made this pulled pork marinade recipe from The Naptime Chef. I doubled the recipe and added 1 tablespoon of cayenne pepper and a little more than a pinch of red pepper flakes to give it a little more of a kick. And wow did it add kick. The smell of the pork roast cooking in the crock pot all day is amazing. I think this will be my go-to marinade/barbecue recipe from now on. Too bad Dad won't be home tonight, but there will be plenty when he returns.

'Tis the Season to Be Baking

JillyBean and I will spend most of this week in the kitchen baking cookies. I feel pretty safe doing this with her since she's not really into eating cookies, so there should be plenty for us as well as friends and family.

Today's creation was Snickerdoodles. I used a recipe that a good friend gave me and they have been a Christmas mainstay for the past six years. I remember when I added them to the lineup - I wanted something with cinnamon. Jilly had the most important job in making Snickerdoodles - rolling them in the cinnamon/sugar mix. She did a great job.

Tomorrow we are going to make a ginger/chocolate chip cookie that I made for the first time last year after finding it in Real Simple. Wednesday will be spent making cut-out cookies and hopefully on Thursday we'll make something out the raspberry chocolate chips that I found this afternoon.

I really enjoy making cookies at Christmas time. It reminds me of when I was a kid and made them with my Grandmother. We would sit at her kitchen table and roll out the dough then cut out Santas, trees, stars, bells, angels and other Christmas shapes then sprinkle them with colored sugar. It was something that I always looked forward to so I hope that I can create the same sort of memory with Jilly.

Editor's Note: The hat Jilly is wearing in the photo is her red snow hat, but she calls it her Santa hat. She insisted on wearing it today and kept saying, "ho ho ho" all afternoon.

Thankful

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and Jilly seems to be realizing that there is something between Halloween and Christmas. Our little ritual of writing down something each morning that she is thankful for is beginning to sink into her teeny little head.

We will be spending the afternoon with close friends. I have been asked to bring nothing, but that goes against the whole point of Thanksgiving. We did contribute the turkey, although we're not cooking it - just used our grocery store points for a free one. However, I am making my "famous" pecan pie. I am making it because no one in our house likes pecan pie and if I want to eat it, I have to make it for someone else.

I will turn on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in the morning and hope that Jilly takes a minute to watch, but if not, that's OK. I always enjoyed watching it with my dad when I was a kid.

We wish all of you a very Happy Thanksgiving and hope that you take a few minutes to realize the many blessings in your life and not dwell on the challenges.

today Jilly is thankful for the candy Christmas trees we made together last night

Sweet Temptations

I am a follower of a fabulous cake designer's blog called Cake Journal. This woman makes some amazing cakes and I can only wish that I had half of her talent. Actually, what I really need is the patience to make such beautiful creations.

I can say that I do make pretty good cakes. I can usually bake pretty well. It's the decorating part where I fall short. So, I was super duper excited to see a new e-mail pop up in my in box from Williams-Sonoma touting their new cookie cake pan.

The recipe is for a chocolate cake and you can either spread frosting between to two ends or ice cream. I vote for ice cream.