Let's start off with one of my biggest lessons of the week. Sometimes the individual parts are greater than the sum. I've mentioned before that I love cooking magazines, like crazy love. And this recipe for African Stew happened to be in one of my mother in laws cooking magazines, I immediately grabbed it. I liked everything involved.
Carrots - good.
Celery - good.
(If you're not reading this like Joey from the Thanksgiving episode...well hmph!)
Onion - good.
Tomatoes - good!
Coconut milk - good!
Sweet potato - Yes!
Curry powder - Good!
Put it all together, and I hated it. Now, I'm sharing this with you for a couple of reasons. 1. I'm hoping that if I write this down I'll remember that I don't like sweet potatoes in my curry. 2. I think often in blogging we hear about people making mistakes in perfecting a recipe, but we only see the finished product that looks beautiful. And I just want to say, sometimes the finished product ain't great.
Yesterday was dessert day and Kirsti and I had an action packed day planned. We were making these peppermint brownies from How Sweet It Is (modified to be gluten free), gluten free gold fish gold fish crackers, and a gluten free crumpet attempt.
Now I'm going to share this recipe here because we had 2 small alterations to the recipe.
You'll need:
For the brownies:
1/2 cup unsalted melted butter
1 cup white sugar (we used fine/caster sugar)
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup gluten free flour (we used white wings!)
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
a pinch of salt
2/3 cup chocolate chips
For the Peppermint Pattie layer
2 cups powdered sugar (gluten free!)
1.5 tablespoons softened unsalted butter
3 tablespoons evaporated milk
1/4 teaspoon vegetable oil
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract
A few drops of green food colouring
For the Ganache
100 grams dark chocolate (we used 75 grams dark chocolate chips and 25 grams milk chocolate)
2.5 tablespoons heavy cream
First, preheat your oven to 350F or 176C. Grease and line a 8inx8in pan.
Then, in a large bowl combine melted butter, sugar, vanilla and whisk until it's nice or smooth (or use Kirsti's fancy pants new stand mixer). Mix in each egg one at a time. Then add flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt - stirring until nice and combined. mix in chocolate chips. Spread the batter in the baking dish back for 25 to 30 minutes. Remove and let it fully cool.
After the brownies are cooled, make the peppermint pattie frosting by adding all the ingredients together and beating with an electric mixer (or again the fancy stand mixer). Spread onto the brownies and let them rest in the fridge for 30 minutes or until the frosting is set.
Then make the ganache, heat the cream until warmed, add the chocolate and stir until smooth. Spread over the top of the frosting. Devour.
We also made attempted crumpets. Don't be fooled by their appearance, they tasted like yeast and chemicals. Delicious. We learned some valuable lessons here, mostly the crumpets need gluten. And if they are to be made gluten free, it will not be by a simple substitute the gluten free flour for the gluten flour but a more serious recipe change.
We also made goldfish crackers (we left out the xantham gum, because eh). Although without a gold fish cookie cutter, we made starfish, heartfish parrot fish, and star-of-david fish. I reccomend you make these immediately. No. right now.
And to top this off, last night I tried a new cheese - gorgonzola piccante instead of gorgonzola dulce. Verdict: Yum.
So, that adds four new recipes to my goal of cooking 100 new foods, 2 things I'll never make again, and one more cheese.
What have you been making lately, and which one of these are you going to try first?
