History
According to History of Sauces by Linda Stradley (What’s Cooking America), the sauce was created by Chef Jules Colette at his restaurant Le Pavillon Henri IV and served in the 1830s, but the sauce was named after Henri IV who was a gourmand born in Béarn, France and was King of France from 1589 to 1610.

"Don't be saucy with me Béarnaise..."
I had trouble when I made Béarnaise the first time. I added the clarified butter too fast, and it threw a tantrum and broke. I quickly consulted the cookbook, which told me to throw an ice cube into the mix to cool it off. This didn’t work. The next thing the cookbook suggested was to take a new pot, add a bit of cold water, and then add a ladle full of the sauce and whisk. Once that was smooth, add a bit more broken sauce to the fresh pot. Slowly, and ever patiently I whisked. And it worked! Thankfully, my eggs didn’t curdle so I was good to go. By this time, the T-bone steaks were ready, everyone was hungry, and I took a few casual photos and dug in. Later, looking at the photos, I realized I should have spent more time on the photo shoot!

A second Béarnaise sauce for lunch later in the week, no sauce tantrums (was I more patient or was it the room temperature butter?), more time with the photo shoot, and this time sauce spread leisurely over fried chicken, and again it was delicious!

I had some leftover Béarnaise sauce and attempted to re-heat it for supper. I put the burner on low, poured my leftover sauce into a clean pot, added 1 tablespoon of very hot water, and whisked like mad. Without stopping, I continued whisking, dipping my finger in for a heat-and-taste test, until the sauce was warm enough to drape over my leftover chicken. It worked, and it was delicious!

"A Béarnaise sauce is simply an egg yolk, a shallot,
a little tarragon vinegar, and butter,
but it takes years of practice for the result to be perfect."
–Fernand Point–

Who is Fernand Point?

"I believe Fernand Point is one of the last true gourmands
of the 20th century. His ruminations are extraordinary and thought-provoking. He has been an inspiration for legions of chefs.”

–Thomas Keller–{On a side note, earlier this week I even made Eggs Benedict for one! It’s extremely dangerous to know how to whip this up on short notice given the amount of butter and the fact that it’s swimsuit season in these parts!}

Choking on Artichokes
On the artichoke front, I choked. This was the first time I’ve cooked artichokes! And I failed. First off, I had to get some tweezers to dig out the sliver of a prickle from one of the buggers. Then, I carefully de-leaved them until I thought I’d gotten to the light green center. After rubbing them lovingly with lemon, I plopped them into boiling water to cook. 30 minutes later, I took them out. I tried to dig out the middle to put the lovely un-broken Béarnaise sauce in, destroying 2 of the 3 chokes in the process. Then, when I finally sat down to eat, I daintily put one in my mouth and couldn’t chew it! Since artichokes are in the recipe for next week, I may try it again, but I need help.

Watch a Pro
Here’s a video showing how to make Béarnaise sauce. This video shows the solids from the reduction being strained and then thrown out, but the version in Le Cordon Bleu at Home keeps these in the sauce, which adds a nice texture to the sauce.

Links
12 Tips You Need To Make Perfect Bearnaise Sauce 

Cobblers, crumbles, grunts, slumps, brown betties. All have fruit. All have a pastry, streusel, or cake-like portion. All are easy and all are delicious. Dorie's cobbler doesn’t disappoint either. You can find a pretty good description of each of these types of desserts here.

According to Dorie, “a cobbler is about the most flexible dessert you can think of. In fact, it may even have gotten its name because of its flexibility: you can cobble it together with just about anything you've got around.”

I cut some rhubarb from the garden and bought some local strawberries. The topping was simple and only required a squeeze and press to form on top of the individual cobblers I made.

Recipe: Mixed Berry Cobbler

You can find the recipe for Mixed Berry Cobbler in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours (affiliate link)s by Dorie Greenspan or at NPR where Dorie talks with Michele Norris about this great summertime dessert. Dorie also provides a blueberry-peach cobbler recipe at Serious Eats. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Beth of Our Sweet Life who chose the recipe for this week.

Tasting Notes
This was such a simple and easy dessert. As the recipe says, go light on the strawberries since they reduce a lot during baking. I should have read the recipe more carefully, but it was still delicious!

Recipe for Next Week (July 1)
Apple Cheddar Scones on page 32.

Saw this on LifeHacker and had to give it a try! I copied the list of Recipes from my blog and pasted it into this cool applet called Wordle (before the Wordle game became a hit). According to Wordle, the size of a word in the visualization is proportional to the number of times the word appears in the input text, so I guess I've done a lot of Tuesdays with Dorie! 

Earlier this year, I was hunting for a “Tarte au Sucre” recipe that is part of the cooking school curriculum I'm working through as a self-directed study. At first, I thought all I had to do was pull out the sugar pie recipe that’s common at Christmas time with French Canadians. I was disappointed to find out that the Tarte au Sucre I was being asked to make was a yeasted cake, like brioche with a sugar topping. Not even close to the French Canadian version!

When Jennifer of The Domestic Goddess, who launched the popular Sugar High Friday blogging event, announced that she was hosting this month and that the theme was Canadian sweets, I knew I had to participate. I also knew I had a chance to make Sugar Pie, the Canadian version (my take on it!). I took some liberties with the traditional recipe. Mine has Dulce de Leche, as if it weren't sweet enough already! I also had to throw in a touch of maple syrup, since it's made just 45 minutes from my home!

This pie is more often than not served as a tart, but I added a little whiff of pastry on top to keep its pie delineation. The addition of flour is debated, and I’m sure my flavoring additions will be hotly debated by traditionalists, but I have taste testers who will back me up saying it was delicious! However, they are not French Canadian and it was their first taste of sugar pie. Here’s a great article for some more information about sugar pie.

Earlier this month, I’d read about pie in jars. I’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to use this brilliant idea. Amy at Angry Chicken and LloydandLauren also made desserts in jars. I love it!

Recipe: Sugar Pie

For Mother’s Day a couple years ago, my daughter’s teacher collected favorite recipes from each student and compiled them into a booklet. It was and is a treasured gift for a foodie like me. One of the best recipes in this handmade book was one called “Best Brownies”.

I’ve made these brownies over and over, and they have the qualities I love in a brownie: cakey, chocolate-y, never-fail, and everyone likes them. Well, one daughter likes them with icing and the other without. They can’t even agree on brownies! :)

For a Barn Dance and BBQ that we went to on the weekend, I decided to make brownie pops and stick them into a half a watermelon for the dessert table. They garnered lots of oohs and aahs, and even the local flies liked them. Here I thought I was getting a nice picture of the brownie pops in the watermelon only to have a fly figure I needed some help with the food styling!

Recipe: Brownie Pops

Makes: 1 8x8 pan or 2 dozen pops or minis

Ingredients:

::Whisk Wednesdays::
Welcome to Whisk Wednesdays!

Hollandaise sauce
This week it's Hollandaise sauce, another of the five mother sauces. (Velouté, Espagnole, Béchamel, and Tomato are the others.) Hollandaise is similar to mayonnaise and lemon curd, but it's served warm.

Hollandaise is basically a sabayon, which is a foamy, emulsified mixture of yolks and liquid (in this case water). If you were to add sugar and a sweet wine, you would have zabaglione. But, today we're adding a ton (only half a pound) of butter to the sabayon.

History and Tips
Hollandaise dates back to the 17th century and used to be named Sauce Isigny, which is a town in Normandy famous for its butter. However, during World War I, France could no longer produce butter so they imported it from Holland and the name stuck. (from Linda Stradley at What's Cooking America)

Hollandaise is a tricky beast and requires constant attention, sorta like kids. You must whisk constantly to ensure the eggs don't stick to the bottom of the pan and to keep the texture smooth, not grainy.

There are different ways of making hollandaise: with a double boiler or directly over the flame. With clarified butter or with cubes of unsalted butter. With a blender or just a whisk.

Today, I tried putting the yolks directly over the flame (or burner, in my case!) and whisked constantly. I also made two batches: one using clarified butter and the other using butter cubes. The sauce with the clarified butter was runnier, plus I prefer the flavor from using the milk solids from good 'ol butter (and I'm not wasting any precious butter).

Earlier this year, I made lemon curd for a lemon cream tart and at the same time tried making a hollandaise sauce following the method suggested for Dorie's The Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart. It turned out great. This is yet another option for making hollandaise.

Hollandaise Trouble
Many things can go wrong with this sauce, but here are the tips I found to try to correct the problem.

• If curdled, blend in a blender although the texture won't be the same. You may just want to start over.

• If broken, try whisking in a little cream or water. The sauce may break if it becomes too hot. In this case cooling it off with cold water or an ice cube might do the trick.

• If too thick, add a little boiling water.

• If too thin, you may have added the butter too fast.

If you have the time (and an extra half pound of butter lying around), just start over! That's what I ended up doing after finding my first batch too runny. I put it back on the stove to reheat since it had been sitting out too long for the photo shoot(!), which quickly caused it to break into many pieces!

Watch a Pro
• Here is a great video showing how to make hollandaise.

• Here is another video with Alton Brown demonstrating hollandaise.

Links
I also found these cool links:

• Here's one that shows a picture of deep-fried hollandaise!

• Here's a good article with more background information about hollandaise.

Recipe: Hollandaise

You can find the recipe for Hollandaise in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home. To see how the rest of the group fared (all 3 of us!) with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger!

Sauce Moutarde

For a variation, you can add Dijon mustard (or whatever mustard you want) to taste. This version tasted great on a ham roast we had. I also tried it on asparagus and the Eggs Benedict and loved it on these too.

Recipe: Eggs Benedict

Serves: 1

1 English Muffin, toasted
1-2 slices back bacon, cooked
1 poached egg
Hollandaise sauce
Freshly ground black pepper

Tasting Notes
Eggs Benedict always seemed so special when we went out for breakfast. Everyone else would order it, and I would order my French Toast. Now, though, I've discovered how much I love this heart-unfriendly breakfast fare and plan on making it more often. The hollandaise was rich and buttery, smooth and creamy, with a slight tang from the lemon. The hardest part of this dish is getting the poached egg properly poached (not too underdone and not too overdone). I still need practice on this front.

The mustard version was delicious too, perfect for a variation on Eggs Benedict or with ham and asparagus.

The best tip I learned was to use a thermos to store the Hollandaise sauce in until you're ready to serve. Brilliant, I tell you.

Next Week (June 25)
• Sauce Béarnaise (Warm emulsified sauce derived from Hollandaise sauce) on page 250

• Coeur de Filet Henri IV (Filet mignons with artichokes and Béarnaise sauce)

. . . . . . . . . .

Running total: $440.68 + $3.31 (Hollandaise) + $2.40 (Eggs Benedict) = $446.39

Butter used so far: 5 pounds, 29 tablespoons

. . . . . . . . . .

Check out the other posts for Whisk Wednesdays:

Grandma's Kitchen Table - Hollandaise Sauce and Moutarde Sauce
InsomniMom - Hollandaise and Sauce Moutarde

More to Explore:

• Index of Recipes
• Visual Recipe Index

This week with Dorie we’re making pâte à choux, a magical pastry that’s cooked twice (once on the stove and once in the oven), puffs, and tastes so light that you think it could be good for you! Ever since I saw a picture of choux swans, I’ve wanted to make them. And this week I had my chance.

Pâte à choux (pronounced “shoe”), also called choux paste, dates back to 1540 and comes from the word “choux”, which means cabbage in French— that’s what pâte à choux looks like when baked as traditional cream puffs, supposedly.

Traditional choux paste contains four simple ingredients: butter, water, flour, and eggs. Dorie’s recipe includes some milk, sugar and salt for extra flavor. I ended up adding a bit of extra flour (about ¼ cup) so that the batter would come together in the pot. This meant that I had to add an extra egg as well, but everything worked out fine in the end.

Pâte à choux is such a versatile recipe, and can be used for both sweet and savory dishes, such as Gougères or chouquettes, Pommes dauphine, Croquembouche, Paris-Brest, and Gnocchi à la Parisienne.

Swans
To make the swans, you can pipe teardrop shapes, which become the wings when cut in half. I used a cream puff bottom for the base of the swan. The other half of the cream puff can be cut to make wings if you don't want to pipe out tear drop shapes.

To make the neck, pipe the number "2" on parchment paper. Make sure you watch the oven when you bake these since they burn really fast. (I only had one that was photo-worthy!)

To make the eyes, use a toothpick and dot some melted chocolate at the end of the number "2".

Links
Here’s a great article about choux pastry.

Here’s a video of making choux paste swans.

Recipe: Peppermint Cream Puff Ring

You can find the recipe for Peppermint Cream Puff Ring in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours (affiliate link) by Dorie Greenspan or at Bon Appetit. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Caroline of A Consuming Passion who chose the recipe for this week (and has also posted the recipe).

Tasting Notes
The minty, fresh taste of the cream with the lightness and slightly chewy texture of the choux and the richness of the chocolate was a perfect combination of flavors. I absolutely loved it! It was worth all the pastry bags I went through to make this dessert!

My kids enjoyed some of the cream puffs filled with ice cream and topped with chocolate sauce since their palate is not refined enough to like mint! Another favorite was the peppermint cream over raspberries. Mmm, delicious.


I also used the peppermint cream on top of lemon bars! Mint and lemon are a winning combination, and this cream is so versatile.

You can store the cream puffs in an airtight container for a week or in the freezer. This is so dangerous to have on the counter that I think I’ll have to find room in the freezer! Another winning recipe from Dorie!

Note: I just read several great posts about choux paste over at Joe Pastry. Check it out!

Recipe for Next Week (June 24)
Mixed Berry Cobbler on pages 416-417 chosen by Beth of Our Sweet Life.

I love lemon desserts, but I've never made lemon bars. These are tart lemon bars that are a welcome reprieve from the sweeter dessert fare.

It's like a lemon meringue pie with a shortbread crust and no meringue. Tangy, delicious, and especially good with Dorie Greenspan's peppermint cream.

Bottom
The bottom is a shortbread-like crust that you can easily push into the pan using a measuring cup or your fingers. Ellie's has icing sugar and vanilla that might be even more flavorful. Then you bake it in the oven for a bit.

Middle
The filling is easy because you just whisk it and then bake it off (after you've baked the crust).

Top
Dust with icing sugar, and you're done. You can top with peppermint cream for even more decadence.

Recipe: Lemon Bars

You can find a video of a similar recipe for Lemon Bars here.

What a week it was! Ups, downs, and everything in-between.

• First, my brownie popsicles made The Kitchn's Seen, noted, and found delicious for June 9.

• Someone named Dorie made a nice comment about my Strawberry Tart. Could it be the famous Dorie Greenspan?

• I had to change my Blogger template since I was causing people’s computers to crash! Not good.

• Tastespotting (my favorite place to procrastinate and admire) died. I’m still in mourning. But just found Food Gawker. I'm so relieved!

• I found a couple of other cooking buddies (Kayte and Shelley) who want to join me on this cooking school curriculum journey that I’m working on. (Kayte’s computer is the one that crashed every time she visited, and she’s still interested in cooking with me!) I’m calling it "Whisk Wednesdays", and if you want to join in on the fun, click HERE for more information. We’d love to have you join us! Now, we just need a cute little avatar...

• Lastly, Mara from Lick the Spatula, who has some amazing looking treats on her blog, tagged me.

The rules:

Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

What was I doing ten years ago?
Expecting Baby #1.

What are five (non-work) things on my to-do list for today? {is blogging considered “non-work”???}
1. catch up on reading other food blogs (only 360 feeds left to read!)
2. make hollandaise and eggs Benedict
3. take pictures of hollandaise
4. eat said eggs Benedict
5. write about hollandaise
Right now, everything that isn’t blogging seems like work to me. Sad, but true. I gotta get a life!!

Five snacks I enjoy:
1. carrots
2. cherries
3. plain chips and Helluva Good Dip
4. coffee cake
5. puffed wheat cake (I have been known to eat a whole pan myself in a very short amount of time)

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
1. travel
2. live on a beach
3. eat in all the 3-star Michelin restaurants in the world
4. eat street food in as many different countries as I could
5. hire someone to clean my house, do the laundry...

Places I've lived:
1. Madang, Papua New Guinea
2. Regina, Saskatchewan
3. Ottawa, Ontario

Jobs I've had:
1. babysitter
2. writer
3. caterer
4. mom

Béchamel (pronounced bay-shah-mel) is a thickened white sauce, also known as a milk sauce and is one of the five mother sauces. (Velouté, Espagnole, Hollandaise, and Tomato are the others.)

Although I make a mean homemade mac ‘n cheese, I didn’t know I was, in fact, making Béchamel as a starting point. I used to run home from school every day hoping we were getting macaroni and cheese for lunch and enjoying it while watching re-runs of Flintstones on TV. My daughters love homemade macaroni too, but I remember feeding it to my daughters and their friends, and their friends not finishing it because it wasn’t Kraft Dinner!

Some Notes about Béchamel
Béchamel is similar to velouté, but the liquid that’s added is milk, not stock.

If you don’t include the veal in the recipe, it’s known as Béchamel Maigre (which means lean Béchamel).

Although you don’t have to heat the milk first, doing so makes it easier to achieve a smooth sauce. Also, the sauce thickens faster since it doesn’t have to come up to temperature first. There is great debate about whether to add hot liquid to a cold roux or cold liquid to hot roux. I've done both, and as long as I've vigorously whisked it, I haven't had any lumps.

Steeping the milk with aromatics (such as thyme and bay) while you bring it to a boil enhances the flavor of the Béchamel.

The sauce should coat the back of a spoon, called nappe (pronounced nap), which means tablecloth in French.

History
Catherine de Medici's Tuscan cooks brought Béchamel to France from Italy in the 17th Century. The sauce was named after a courtier, Louis de Béchameil, marquis de Nointel (1630–1703) who was maitre d'hotel of the French King Louis XIV. (Wikipedia)

Watch a Pro
Click here to watch a pro make Béchamel.

Great articles
I found some great articles about Béchamel while researching this topic:
• A roux awakening by Peter Hertzmann
• History of Sauces by Linda Stradley at the website What's Cooking America
• Cream Sauces - Béchamel and Hollandaise by Jack Lang at the eGullet Society

Recipe: Béchamel

from Rogov's Ramblings

Makes: about 2 cups

La Palette is a small café in the heart of Paris that offers (among other things) wine by the glass, salads, croque monsieur, and this delicious but easy strawberry tart. Dorie Greenspan once ate this tart on the patio and then recreated the recipe for her book Baking: From My Home to Yours.

This recipe is super easy: strawberries, jam, and a cookie crust are the only requirements. The rest are optional.

Top
I used a homemade strawberry, peach and lavender jam that I made last summer. On the weekend, I found the strawberries at a local market, and they happened to be locally grown! Perfect.

I’ve been saving a Framboise I picked up at Puddicombe Estate Winery in Southern Ontario last year, so I had the makings of a 100-mile dessert. After practicing last week with flambéing, I did it again this week with the strawberries and Framboise. It added an extra flavor boost to the berries.

Bottom
The tart shell is simple too, and one that I’ve made before for The Most Extraordinary Lemon Tart. It’s a firm crust, more cookie than pastry that holds up well as finger food. I rolled it out on the removable bottom of the tart pan with a sheet of wax paper on top. Then I lifted the bottom and placed it carefully in the ring and patched the sides as needed.

Side
Following Dorie’s advice, I made a crème fraiche using the recipe I’ve used before from this article to serve alongside the tart.

Recipe

You can find the recipe for La Palette’s Strawberry Tart in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or at Serious Eats. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! 

Carrie over at Carrie's Kitchen Creations gave me a "Blogging with a Purpose" award, and I'm so flattered and honored! Thank you so much, Carrie! Carrie has a great Tips section on her blog, beautiful pictures of food, and is a fellow member of the Tuesdays with Dorie baking group. Now, I get to pass on the blog love.

1. Nominate 5 blogs which haven’t had this award before.
2. Each of the blogs must have a purpose.
3. The nominated blogs must make a link back to this page.
4. The logo from the award must be put on their blog and it must link back to this blog.

Here are some of my favorite blogs and a blurb about how they blog with purpose:

a whisk and a spoon - To show us how beautiful food can be
Cakespy - To inform and entertain
Ezra Pound Cake - To share a smile and some delicious cake
Kitchen Wench - To share her family's Korean recipes and other tasty treats
Playing with Fire and Water - To experiment and teach

Check them out! Thanks again, Carrie!

I always thought demi-glace (pronounced DEHM-ee glahs) was stock reduced by half. If only it were that simple and "basic" as the title suggests!

A simple stock reduction refers to glace de viande (pronounced glahs duh vee-AHND). Traditional demi-glace is much more involved, literally means half glaze, and requires even more hours in the kitchen babysitting stock. It is half stock and half Espagnole (pronounced ehs-pah-NYOHL) sauce that are then reduced by half. This traditional method is a little passé according to an article on StyleForum, which suggests that reductions are hot and roux is not. But some believe that the time spent on making demi-glace the traditional way using both brown stock and Espagnole sauce is well worth it.

Espagnole Sauce
So, what is Espagnole sauce? Espagnole sauce is the most basic brown stock in French cuisine, has the distinction of being one of the five mother sauces, and has a Spanish name. You can credit the Spanish cooks at Louis XIII’s wedding who added Spanish tomatoes to the brown sauce and everyone loved it. I'm sure these cooks would have given the Iron Chefs a run for their money with their Spanish tomatoes!

Espagnole sauce is made with brown roux and brown stock. Bacon, the usual aromatics (onions, celery, carrots, a Bouquet garni), and tomatoes are added. Also, Madeira or sherry is sometimes added, although the recipe I used didn’t call for it.

Process for Demi-glace
So, here’s the process to make classical demi-glace:

1. Make brown stock.
2. Make Espagnole sauce.
3. Make demi-glace.

Since I have a freezer full of stock, I just had to prepare the Espagnole sauce to get to step 3.

Thomas Keller’s Veal Stock (affiliate link) and Demi-glace

When I made veal stock, I made several versions. To make the demi-glace, I used one of the veal stocks that I roasted with tomato sauce. As I was working through this recipe, it occurred to me that Thomas Keller’s veal stock (affiliate link) involved a similar 2-step plus reduction process. His doesn't have a whiff of flour in it nor does it have bacon, but other than that I wonder if you might be able to classify it as demi-glace.

So, you can try the following three ways to get yourself to demi-glace status:

• You can reduce veal stock. This is more common these days since roux is passé and reductions save time in the kitchen. But, for the purist, this is not the path to flavor nirvana.

• You can follow the Keller way, which is to make a "veal stock #1", and then make a "veal stock #2". Then you can reduce that down to make a demi. (Keller’s stock has a more tomato-y flavor, and if you want the smoky flavor that an Espagnole sauce has, you could add the bacon in the last step.)

• You can follow the traditional method and make a stock, make an Espagnole sauce, and then make a demi.

Recipe: Espagnole Sauce

Adapted from La Varenne Pratique (affiliate link)

Makes: 1½ cups

Brownies were “Born in the USA” but no one quite knows who can take credit for this treat.

• Was it Fannie Merritt Farmer who published a recipe for the brownie in her 1906 edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book?

• Was it Fannie’s protégé Maria Willet Howard who published a recipe for brownies in 1907 in Lowney’s Cook Book that contained an egg?

• Was it a housewife in Bangor, Maine who forgot to add baking powder to her chocolate cake who can take credit for the brownie we know today?

What we do know is that it is a favorite and well-loved treat.

Cake or Fudge?
Dorie’s version is more on the fudge side of the brownie scale than the cake side. More butter and chocolate and less flour means a more fudgey brownie.

The chocolate you use is important so use one you like. The better the chocolate, the better the brownie. I used semi-sweet Callebaut Callebaut(“approved by Belgian chocolate makers” and Ottawa foodies alike), and it was delicious. If you want to use a bittersweet chocolate, you may want to use half bittersweet and half milk chocolate.

Links
I found a great article about the brownie written by Cookwise author Shirley O. Corriher.

The Nibble has an article that talks about the origin of the brownie.
Playing Around
I was inspired by the Daring Bakers’ cheesecake pops to give brownie popsicles a go. I used this popsicle pan once before for my daughter’s birthday party, so it was time to dust it off and try brownies in it. Although they look cute for the photo op, I wouldn’t recommend it. This recipe was too delicate for the popsicle angle. A more cakey one would be better suited to it.

Recipe: French Chocolate Brownies

You can find the recipe for French Chocolate Brownies at this blog Di’s Kitchen Notebook or in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours (affiliate link) by Dorie Greenspan. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger!

Fannie Merritt Farmer’s original 1906 version of brownies
I have a favorite brownie recipe that is more like cake that I usually make, but I was curious about Fannie Merritt Farmer’s (affiliate link) original 1906 version of brownies. Although I have a little cookbook by Fannie, it didn’t have the brownie recipe in it. Thanks to the internet, I found the recipe and baked up a batch for comparison. I used the same Callebaut chocolate that I used in Dorie’s version. I also cut the brownies into “shapely” pieces as recommended by the recipe! These brownies were good, but more chewy, fudge-y, and had a crisp top. But, it wasn’t as chocolate-y as Dorie’s version.


Tasting Notes
Dorie’s French Chocolate Brownie is a delicious fudgey treat that melts in your mouth. Personally, I loved the rum-soaked raisins in these bars. They added a richness to the chocolate, but some of my tasters threw a tantrum upon tasting it, begging me, through their tears, to make a new batch sans raisins. Kids these days! I will definitely be making these again (both with and without raisins).

Recipe for Next Week (June 10)
La Palette’s Strawberry Tart on page 374.

More to Explore:

• Index of Recipes
• Visual Recipe Index