ON A MISSION FOR BROWNIES

I've been craving brownies for weeks now. Chocolatey, chewy, gooey brownies. About a week ago I made Coconut Swirl Brownies courtesy of Martha, but they were more cakey than chewy and despite being a hardcore fan of anything-coconut, I just wasn't feeling it. The chewy chocolate brownie craving had not been fulfilled and so this evening, I tried my hand at Martha's Double Chocolate Brownies. Her headnote made promises of fudgy brownies on the basis that so many other people had raved about them. I followed the recipe to a tee and patiently waited for the brownies to bake. (I ate a Fuji apple with almond butter to bide my time.)After 25 minutes my brownies were done. In fact, despite the 35 minutes suggested in Martha's Cookies book, I thought my brownies were overdone; a toothpick came out totally clean--not a good sign for a fudgy brownie. I waited the 15 minutes before I took them out of the pan and then another 30 minutes before I cut them into squares. Okay so it was really more like five minutes but didn't I tell you I'd been craving brownies for three weeks?!

The result? Not a fudgy brownie. My brownies were overdone :( They were more cakey than fudgy and I still have not conquered my brownie craving. Don't get me wrong, they taste great--especially with the addition of chopped walnuts--but they're just not chewy. (I didn't include the recipe in the above link because the recipe on the website and the recipe in the Cookies book differ in quantities and ingredients.)

I want a brownie that reminds me of those infamous Two-Bite Brownies. I want a brownie that results in a texture reminiscent of the ones you make from a box--except I want to bake them from scratch.

Is a recipe for the ultimate chewy brownie really that hard to come by nowadays? In order to make my brownies more palatable, I ate it with a couple of small scoops of honey lavender ice cream and extra chopped walnuts. I don't know what it is about lavender, but I just can't get enough--even when it's scooped on top of a brownie square.Even though the combination of chocolate, lavender and honey sounded a little weird in my head, I'll tell you this: it was incredible. Plate-licking good in fact but you'd really have to like lavender in order to do that. I stopped myself just a little short to show you to devoured evidence:
And I'll end with that, continuing my search for the ultimate chewy brownie recipe. I'll see if Google can help me out on this one.

HONEY LAVENDER ICE CREAM SANDWICHES!

Now if this If that doesn't get your mouth-watering, then I don't know what will:That right there is a homemade honey lavender ice cream sandwich and I could not be more proud of it. That's what you do with your chewy lavender cookies. Of course, let's see a few more photos, shall we?Yum!Yes, it tastes even better than it looks. And even though I hate Blogger for not letting me rotate my own photos, it was just this good:Well I guess that's enough.

RECIPE: LAVENDER COOKIES!

I almost never crave cookies. It's true. As much as I never crave chocolate, I just don't crave cookies. I just don't crave sweets, period. I'd rather snack on a bag of chips or my beloved Cheetos which I have not tasted in at least half a decade. (Excuse me while I go shed a tear or two.) One morning Sean and I were walking around downtown and we started talking about ice cream sandwiches. I started talking about the cookie part of the ice cream sandwich and that was it. For the rest of the day, subconsciously, that's all I could think about. Even in the evening, as I sat in front of the TV with my mother, I actually found myself saying out loud "I want a cookie. Do we have any cookies?" and of course, we don't have any cookies in this house. Even if we did, they probably wouldn't be cookies I could eat unless they were homemade by myself and I hardly ever make cookies. Cupcakes or muffins yes, cookies no.

But the desire for a cookie was growing more and more with each passing hour until the very next day, I couldn't take it anymore. I grabbed all the ingredients from the pantry and took the butter out of from the fridge. (I had actually just stuck it back into the fridge 30 minutes earlier from having let it set to room-temperature, doh!). 30 minutes did the trick though; it was soft enough that the KitchenAid could do all the work for me. Of course, I didn't want just any cookies, I wanted lavender cookies. And not just the typical lavender lemon shortbread cookies you see all over the internet but a chewy lavender cookies, reminiscent of a chewy chocolate chip cookie. I scoured the internet for a chewy lavender cookie recipe but came up short and that's when I decided to improvise...
DOM'S CHEWY LAVENDER COOKIES (makes 10 big cookies)
Ingredients:
- 1 1/-8 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
- 1/4 cup white sugar
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 egg
- 3 tsp dried lavender buds

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F. (I use the convection bake button on my oven.)
   
2. Whisk together flour and baking soda and set aside.
3. Using a stand-up mixer or electric mixer, beat butter and both sugar until pale and fluffy on medium speed, about three minutes.
4. Reduce speed and add salt, vanilla and eggs. Beat until mixed, about one minute.
   
5. Add flour mixture and mix until combined, about one minute. Stir in lavender buds with a wooden spoon or spatula.
6. Divide cookie batter into 10 balls using the 'two spoon' method onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 10 minutes, edges will be golden but center will still be soft.
7. Remove from oven and let sit on baking sheet for 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer to wire rack to cool completely. Store in airtight container or...
8. Spread honey lavender ice cream on one cookie and place another cookie on top.
   

Say what with that last step? Yeah, that's right...stay tuned!
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Note: I also made chocolate chip cookies for Sean and those are the ones you see above the lavender ones in photo of the mass cookies. They were good too. I just added 1/2 cup of milk chocolate chips and 40g of Lindt chocolate with Sea Salt broken into small chunks into the dough. The Sea Salt chunks were so good. Next time I'm making them with no chocolate chips and just the Sea Salt chunks. I'm quite obsessed with that chocolate. It's the ONLY chocolate I actually sometimes crave. Sometimes. Like maybe once every....4 months?

RECIPE: HONEY LAVENDER ICE CREAM

So here's the deal...if you're not a fan of lavender, you're not going to be a fan of this post. It's lavender-swoon-crazy as I'm crazy for lavender. I'm a bit of a fanatic actually. Lavender in its purest form (the bud of course) does something to me that only rivals the neroli blossom. It makes me calm. It makes me happy. Inhaling those lavender vapours just makes me peaceful. It really is true, lavender does have all kinds of medical uses. From headaches/migraines, insomnia, bug bites and even disinfecting walls/floor in World War II, lavender has a multitude of uses. I have many uses for lavender myself. I tend to use lavender for its medical purposes (as a migraine reliever) and also in culinary uses.

Enter honey lavender ice cream. Say what?! Yes, you read that right, honey lavender ice cream and it's more delicious than you think.

Taken from a recipe from Martha Stewart, I spent three hours on Saturday afternoon, making ice cream. It was the first day back to cooking since the heat wave started.

Mise en place:Individual ingredients beginning with 2 cups of whole milk:1/4 cup of dried lavender buds:1/3 cup of honey:5 egg yolks (save the whites for a huge egg-white omelette): 1/4 cup of white sugar:and 1 cup of heavy cream:Simple right? Okay, here go!

Directions: (these are my directions, not taken from the MS website. If you want her directions, check out the website)

1. Place milk, dried lavender and honey in a medium saucepan and bring to a gentle simmer. Cover saucepan with a lid and let steep at least 5 minutes. (I went with 10. I like my lavender a LOT.) Strain mixture, reserving flavoured milk and discard dried lavender. Set aside.
2. Beat egg yolks and sugar with the paddle attachment of a stand-up mixer (or whatever you've got) until thick and pale (about 3-5 minutes).
3. Add half the milk mixture to the egg yolk mixture and whisk until blended. (You're doing this so that the egg doesn't scramble from the hot milk.) Stir the egg-milk mixture into the remaining milk and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture is thick (coats the back of a wooden spoon). (Note: I was really confused about this part. Like how thick should it be really? But it has to get pretty thick. You'll notice the difference when it happens. But stir constantly. Not a desperate, vigorous stir, just a lazy stir is fine. You just don't want to cook the egg-milk mixture.)
4. Once thick, remove from heat and immediately stir in cream. Strain into a medium bowl set over an ice bath. Let sit until well-chilled stirring mixture occasionally, about 30 minutes. (There's definitely no harm in letting it sit longer--if you're patient.)
5. Freeze in an ice-cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions. For my Cusinart Transfer to air-tight container and store for up to 2 weeks.

That last sentence is from Martha's website. You'll see if your ice cream lasts that long...it probably won't--especially if you make yours into ice cream sandwiches. Stay tuned!

FRIDAY NIGHT ON THE TOWN!

Watermelon, ice cream, cupcake, beer, pizza and a tea latte.

That's all the food I consumed within a four-hour period, so it probably comes as no surprise that my stomach is no fan of me this morning. Add to that combination a Tylenol Extra Strength, because I had a mondo headache after work, and well, someone was a little "funny" after dinner last night.

I always forget that you cannot combine Tylenol with alcohol. The thing is that I rarely drink because a) I don't drink wine--ever and b) I'm picky about my beer. So the chances that you'll find me drinking are pretty slim-to-none but Sean and I found ourselves in a quaint part of town and when the restaurant we chose (based solely on their thin crust pizzas with awesome sounding toppings) had beer selections including those from Mill Street Brewery, I had to go for it! But alas, I'm hoping the two or three times I've accidentally mixed these two ingredients together does not lead to serious liver damage or failure.

Let's back up a bit though. Sean waited for me for 30 minutes while I had to work late and after that we headed back to my house so I could change. I grabbed some watermelon for me and my dad's beef curry with rice for Sean. I don't do curries in the wintertime with no air conditioning. It's just plain wrong. Yes, I'm VERY tempermental in the summertime, springtime, whatever.

After that we headed to the mall to find shorts that I actually fit me but stopped by Coldstone Creamery where I got the Banana Caramel Crunch and Sean got the Cookie Minster. We decided to get the "Like It" (small) size this time around but at only 50 cents less, I felt like it was kind of a rip off. We should have gotten the larger size but I know it would have been too much ice cream.

An hour later I came out of the mall with a top and three pairs of shorts. Go me! I was actually previously wearing shorts that were two sizes too big--oops! After that we headed to one part of town's Main St. and came across the Unionville Pizza Co. and it looked promising. Sean suggested we check out the menu but before we did, I couldn't take my eyes off the store front of the Old Firehall Confectionery. Against the dark sky, the old firehall was radiating with light and people buzzing in and out of the shop. I told Sean we had to check it out.

We stepped inside part of my dream-come-true. The shop has everything a die-hard sweet tooth could dream of: ice cream (from Kawartha Dairy), fudge, chocolate-covered anything (pretzels, strawberries, cookies), cakes, cookies, cupcakes and the most artistic and interesting truffles I've seen in-person (chocolate lavender anyone?). After a look around, Sean and I settled on a single cupcake: vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream. What better way to test a shop's worthy-ness than to review the most basic of cupcakes. It's pretty much my MO for any cupcake shop I enter. At $2.89 plus tax for a small (and $3.99 for a large with ganache filling), these were the priciest cupcakes I've ever purchased. They weren't even advertised as all-natural (a la Dufflet) or the best I've ever seen. They were square however. Yep, that's right, square cupcakes and this is what they look like:

Excuse the shite photo. You'll notice the lack of photos from this post because I didn't have my camera with me (blogger nightmare) and the iPhone's abilities to take photos at night are horrid at best.

Our first bites were not pleasant ones. There was something a little bit "off" about the consistency of both the buttercream icing and the cupcake itself. I found the cake to taste artificial; like that of cake mix but as light and fluffy. Sean said it tasted artificial and mealy and he was right. It was definitely mealy. There was a really weird consistency to the cake. We then cleaned out our palettes with water (thanks to the refilled Evian bottle I carry with me everywhere) and tasted the icing and cake by themselves. The icing. Ugh. Where do I even begin. It was hot, almost melting and do I dare say that it tasted like nothing? It was just butter that was a few degrees past room temperature iced onto a cake. It had the slightest taste of vanilla but certainly not one that was pure. It was nice to eat a cupcake that wasn't too sweet but this icing could have used more powdered sugar. It was literally like eating a cake with piped butter and sprinkles on top. At $3 for one small square cupcake, this is definitely not a re-purchase.

After declaring that they may have stole the property for my cupcake shop, I still make better cupcakes and Sean agreed with me. We then headed back across the street for dinner and with hopes that it would turn out to be better than the cupcake. It turns out that the Unionville Pizza Company has been around for three years, though previously known as the Harvest Wine Bar. I remember Harvest Wine Bar. I remember never venturing inside for a very specific reason, though now that reason escapes me. Sean and I opted to sit inside (everyone else was out on the dimly lit patio) and I took a quick glance at the drink menu. My eyes opened wide when I saw Mill St. on tap and in bottles. Seriously, really? Organic beer offerings in a restaurant in my town!? Oh I was giddy with excitement. And not only Mill. St but another option too! I couldn't choose. Faced with so many beer offerings, I asked Sean about the difference between pilsners and ales and whatnot and finally settled on a Nickel Brook cream ale. It's brewed in Burlington (not too far from here) and entirely organic, even carbonated naturally. I was super amped to try Mill St. for the first "real" time (I had previously only had a sip but this completely organic beer got to me. Sean got a German beer that I can't remember the name of but I love it when Sean talks with a German accent so I made him say it three times. His beer was served with a lemon wedge and he was the beer winner of the night. I loved my beer (I finished it all and it's actually rare for me to finish a beer by myself--again, I'm picky) but Sean's was totally awesome. I have to find out what the name of it was from him.

Sean and I opted to split the roast duck pizza and it was great. Not as awesome as the anchovy pizza in New York City (that pizza was to-die-for) but this was good for my town. The dough was made from organic flour and thin as thin could be--just the way I like my crust! Our toppings include roast duck, tomato sauce, mushrooms, goat cheese and arugula piled on top. I thought that there was a little bit too much cheese but Sean didn't seem to mind ;)

Unfortunately the menu on the UPC's website isn't quite up-to-date (items have been updated, prices increased) but if you're in the area, it's definitely worth it to stop by for a meal. They also have some great appetizers including arancini, beet root carpaccio salad and corn chips with fresh guacamole. They also have some great burger options include a turkey, lamb, buffalo, veggie and kobe burger.

After dinner we decided to walk along Main St. and I grabbed a tall black tea latte from Starbucks. I was a little shocked when the barista told me the price: $3.57. Seriously? That's how much I've paid in the past for tea and hot milk with foam on top? I couldn't believe it. I had to borrow a dollar from Sean to pay for my latte. Suffice it to say, there will not be a lot of tea lattes in my future but oh, it was kind of worth it. That's probably the best tea latte I've had in a long time. Sometimes they don't put the sugar syrup (which is fine by me) or sometimes they put too much (blech!) but this one was perfect. Kudos to the barista who made that one. So eventually it got cold and I needed to use the washroom and when I came back from the washroom Sean mentioned that my eyes were red ("you look baked") and I couldn't stop laughing. But eventually I became really sleepy and could barely keep my eyes open so Sean suggested I go lie down in his car while he listened to Bowie. That's when the trouble started. I couldn't walk down the stairs properly and that's when Sean mentioned something and when it hit me, I had a Tylenol earlier (!!) and then I had alcohol. Oops! Anyway, lesson learned; it's never a good idea to mix medication with alcohol.

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Just to make sure that I was not being completely biased, I made my dad eat the cupcake as well and give me his thoughts on it. After his first taste (I wish I had videotaped it, he was tasting it like a person tasting wine), he asked if it contained cornmeal. See, my thoughts exactly...a mealy consistency. I asked him if it was stale or just plain bad and he said it was a combination of both; that it was just sugar with no flavour. After dad's taste-testing, this is what's left of the cupcake:

I'm now at a loss as to what to do with the cupcake. Do I toss it or do I finish it? I'd hate to toss any baked item but I also try to follow my diet of "if I'm not in love with the taste, I won't eat it." According to my rules, I should toss it but I also hate to waste food--though I'll happily throw out all kinds of pre-packaged and processed crap that I find in my house.

REVIEW: LOTS O' PRODUCTS

I have a whole bunch of things to review and instead of doing individual reviews which would have been incredibly short, here they all are together.

1. Mary's Organic Crackers - Herb
These are wheat- and gluten-free and have been eying me for months, years even. Seriously. As soon as they hit the retail store I was working at at the time, I had to have them. So what stopped me? The $6 price tag (despite my discount) and the fact that they look a little sketchy. I'm picky when it comes to crackers. I'm a huge fan of water crackers, Triscuit low-sodium crackers with prosciutto and brie and I'm a huge fan of Ryvita crackers with a smear of cream cheese topped with prosciutto or cucumber slices or radishes, but other than that, I'm not crazy about crackers. I should be since they're easy to snack on and fairly small so they can be tucked into my purse for emergency snacks. The only thing is that, as you can tell, I don't like plain crackers. Oh wait, I forgot the main point I was getting at...one of my co-workers told me that the crackers were a little "weird" and after hearing that, I never bothered to purchase.
But lo and behold, after all my food blog reading and after reading about everyone calling Mary's Crackers, Mary's Crack...I had to give them a chance. So here my friends, is my long-awaited taste of Mary's Organic Crackers in Herb flavour:Quite brown and kind of weird looking. One side--the side you see here--was kind of shiny, while the other side was more matte. It was a little bizarre. The box, upon opening, smelled super strong...of a bunch of weird herbs. It was kind of over-powering and off-putting at first.
Cost: $5.99
Purchased from: Shoppers Drug Mart but also available in grocery stores
Purchase again: I'm on the fence.


2. Vita Coco
I've been reading about Vito Coco water from various food bloggers but it was Heather from Heather Eats Almond Butter whose frequent photos of Vita Coco water made me jot it down on my list of things to get while at Whole Foods. I was a little shocked at the $2 sticker price. I mean really, $2 for a little 330mL tetra pak? That's more than a can of a pop for less than you'd get in a can of pop. And it's just coconut water! But I love coconuts! And it's a natural way to rehydrate!! Ugh!! So many conflicting thoughts were running through my head. As much as I love coconuts and fresh coconut water (my dad sometimes buys young coconuts for 2 for $3), could I really justify buying a small box of coconut water for $2--and mind you, this was actually the sale price. There was a larger size available for $6.99 but what if I didn't like it? So I decided to stick with the smaller size instead and went with the regular and one pineapple flavoured water. Here's my box of the 100% pure coconut water. Note its tiny sizeI stuck that baby in the fridge and drank it when it was cold and holy shit! was that ever good. I mean, I'm not kidding! Anyone that knows me knows that I drink things incredibly slow. It's one of the reasons I cannot drink things in a can unless I'm at home because I know I'll never finish them and so drinks from a can either a) have to be split with someone else or b) put back into the fridge where the gaseous drink will fizzle out.
This coconut water went fast, I mean, REALLY fast. Immediately upon finishing I wanted another one. I wanted the pineapple one and I wanted it NOW. But my will-power prevailed and I was able to keep the other Vita Coco (with pineapple) in the fridge for later consumption. Said coconut water was consumed a few days later after a stressful day at work (I no longer drink as much water as I used to since we're not allowed to have food/drinks in the lab) and I felt really dehydrated once I got home. Hey, what better way to rehydrate than with a Vita Coco?! So I downed that baby pretty quickly. Only bad thing about the pineapple version is that it's pretty strong so the pineapple kind of overpowers the coconut flavour in my opinion. It's more like pineapple with a hint of coconut rather than vice-versa, which I would have preferred.
Overall though, I am hooked. Following the weekend when I had run out of my two precious boxes of Vita Coco, Sean and I wandered into a sketchy Asian market looking for a substitute but nothing suitable was found. I was really surprised though. I'm not taken with the idea of subbing my precious Vita Coco for anything other than the juice of a fresh young coconut.
Cost: 2 for $4 (on sale)
Purchased from: Whole Foods
Purchase again: Hell yes!

3. Liberte Greek yogurt
I've always been a big fan of Liberte's products. From their milk to organic yogurt to their Mediteranee-style thick yogurt, Liberte has always gotten a gold star from me; that's why I was so excited to see a Liberte Greek-style yogurt in store. I didn't even know how much it was since there was no price tag, it was a new product on the shelves, but there was a $1 off coupon so I grabbed one of each (a tub and a coupon) and happily placed it into my basket.I decided that the first way to enjoy my Greek yogurt was with some buckwheat cereal and fruits. What better way to enjoy the natural taste of Greek yogurt, but boy was I in for a shock. It was mega tart. A kind of tart that I couldn't even get accustomed to. The yogurt would be good for cooking applications but it would definitely not be something I would snack on, or even use for breakfast. Blech!
Cost: $3.99 (with my $1 off coupon)
Purchased from: Sobey's
Purchase again: I'm afraid not

4. Larabar - Coconut Dream
In my never-ending quest to find energy bars that actually taste good, I stumbled upon Larabars at my most recent jaunt into Whole Foods. Larabars are quite popular amongst the bloggers I read on a daily basis and the Coconut Dream flavour caught my eye, as well as the "low sodium" advertisement. Surely, my dad would be proud! Here's the bar in action:And the nutritional label:A bit calorie rich for a "snack" but again, these are touted as an energy bar, so I suppose eating them right after eating lunch wasn't the greatest of ideas but I wanted something sweet and this was all I had. Here's the short list of ingredients:
I like coconut and it appeared twice on the list...how awful could the bar be? Well, I've decided that I am no longer purchasing bars where "dates" appear as the first ingredient on the list. Unless dates are fresh or dried and eaten as is, I'm just not a fan of them. Out of every energy bar I've tasted in which dates were a primary ingredient, the consistency and taste never sat well in my mouth. It was a two-bite taste and then it went back in my lunch bag. And that's where it stayed...for days...because I felt guilty throwing it out since it cost me $2.39 plus tax--for one freakin' bar!
Cost: $2.39--ouch!
Purchased from: Whole Foods
Purchase again: No :(

5. So Delicious - Vanilla Bean
If you're not familiar with the So Delicious brand, they manufacture dairy-free frozen treats. Typically their treats are made with soy milk but they also have a line of products made with coconut milk, perfect for people like me who can't consume anything made with soy.
To be honest, I've been dying to try So Delicious ice cream made with coconut milk for ages but every time I'm in a grocery store that carries the coconut milk variety, I'm always far away from home and therefore, can't purchase a pint without it melting. A late-night trip to Metro was a major score because not only did we get the following:we scored it for $1.99 since there wasn't a price when the cashier scanned it. Ah-ma-zing! So onto the product. Look at the inside, real specks of vanilla bean!Here are the nutritionals for a 1/2 cup serving:Not a bad 160 calorie treat, I'd say. And here are the ingredients:Organic and all natural = delicious! Unfortunately, that wasn't quite the case. Not for me, anyway. The aftertaste was a little too much for me to handle. I don't know what it was...perhaps the chicory root?...but it was just too much; I left the carton at Sean's.
Cost: $2
Purchased from: Whole Foods
Purchase again: No :(

6. Tropical Treets Ice Cream - Coconut
At $5.99, this was definitely a "treet." Was it worth it? Yes. It tastes completely and utterly of coconut heaven! It was so good I forgot to take a pic of the ingredient list and well, this was technically Sean's ice cream choice. I chose the bomb above. If you love coconut, you will love this ice cream. That is all. The ice cream is even made locally, within a 30-minute drive of my house, according to Google Maps.
Cost: $5.99
Purchased from: Metro in Stouffville
Purchase again: Hells yes!

So that's all the reviews from this round. Let me know if you've tried any of these products and what you think.