Quadruple Chocolate Brownies

Remember the Roland Mesnier brownies I kept talking about last Fall? Their ba-ack! This time they were for my cousin's baby girl's naming ceremony. (I realize I said my cousin's baby...she would be my cousin too, but you get my point!) I knew there were going to be other desserts, so I figured nice small pieces would be good. I also knew that there were going to be a lot of people I didn't know well, so I figured no nuts would be safest, multiple different chocolates would satisfy everyone, and no funky flavors (like orange or coffee).

I decided on the normal brownie recipe, except I substituted chocolate chips for the optional nuts (plus I used the chocolate chips it calls for.) I used 1/3 white chocolate chips, 1/3 milk chocolate chips, 1/3 semi-sweet chocolate chips. They were excellent!!!

French Culinary Institute

This evening I sat in on a level 2 Pastry Arts class at the FCI. I also handed in my application for the Pastry Arts course starting in mid-August. I can't believe it, I'm really doing this!

Anyway, the class was amazing. All the chef instructors were nice and welcoming, and I actually knew a couple of the answers to the questions they posed to the class! It looks like really hard work, but really fun! I can't wait!

After the class, I met my mom at L'Ecole, the FCI's restaurant, for dinner. Yum! It was good food, good portions, and great service. And the truffled mac and cheese was absolutely amazing! They gave us packages of cookies to take home as well, the perfect end to the night!

Espresso Brownies

Another Fat Witch brownie! These espresso brownies are certainly good, but not my favorite brownie. It's funny because I usually love espresso and chocolate, but for some reason these didn't knock it out of the park. That said, they are still very, very good, and I've eaten more than enough of them! What this recipe does get right is the texture--a bit cakey but still moist, light but not too airy.

Apocalypse Not

Today is May 22, 2011.  As I'm sure you have gathered, the world did not come to an end yesterday.  Perhaps I shouldn't have eaten an entire tray of brownies...  No, just kidding, I didn't really eat all the brownies I made, though had yesterday really been my last day I would have regretted not finishing them off.  Of course that's all assuming I was one of the elect who gets vacuumed up into Heaven.  God knows, I probably wouldn't have been one (I've mocked the whole idea of yesterday being judgement day far too much for Him to chose me!)  Anyway, if they had been right and I wasn't sucked up into Heaven, you know what I'd be doing right now?  Eating!  I'd be eating for the next five months.  You'd better believe that if we all really did only have five months until (as either CNN or USA Today put it) "the world goes kaput" I would spend as much of that time as possible eating.  I figure there would be no point in worrying about hardened arteries or high cholesterol or becoming morbidly obese.  Alas, the apocalypse does not seem to be upon us.  It is not the end of days; so, unfortunately, it is not the end of diets!

I'll be back tomorrow to tell you about those brownies!

Tea at the Peninsula

Day before yesterday I officially graduated! To celebrate, my mom, pops and I went to afternoon tea at the Peninsula. I love their afternoon tea. It's the best tea this side of the Atlantic. The sandwiches are excellent and very fancy (but in a good way). For example, one of them was lobster salad on a mini brioche roll...yum! The scones are good, British scones, nothing out of this world, but really nice. They serve them with real clotted cream (none of this whipped crap that American restaurants tend to use) and very nice jam. Then there are the desserts. I find that some are OK, but not amazing, and some are just perfect! What's especially nice is they will bring you extras of everything, without making you feel like a pig for asking. They are so nice, if you say "oh I really like that chocolate cake," they'll bring you a plate with extra pieces of that cake! And if you tell them that it's a special occasion when you make the reservation, they'll give you an extra dessert (because that's just what I need, more dessert...not that I'm complaining, mind you)! They gave me a gorgeous piece of chocolate cake layered with a light whipped chocolate icing or mousse, topped with a chocolate ganache and beautiful chocolate decorations.

Dessert at Cafe Luxembourg

I graduated yesterday!  The day before was the presentation of degree candidates.  So to celebrate being a degree candidate we all went out to a big dinner at Cafe Luxembourg.  It's on the upper west side of NYC and it is really good.  It's basically an upscale French bistro.  They have excellent desserts (I highly recommend their homemade ice cream, though that's not what I had on Tuesday.)  I had their special molten chocolate cake. It was excellent.  Warm and gooey on the inside, cakey on the outside, and the chocolate ice cream was creamy and delicious. They put a candle in it and wrote happy graduation in chocolate on the plate, which was very nice.  And yummy!

My mom got a chocolate mousse cake, which was also incredible. And it was topped with salted caramel ice cream that, I have to say, was slightly better than my chocolate ice cream. The cake was good too! It was two layers of good chocolate cake with a layer of mousse between and a layer of chocolate on top. The plate was decorated with caramel sauce and dark chocolate tuiles.

Brownies

Yesterday I handed my final paper.  I am officially done with all my college work!  In addition to handing in my paper, I brought some brownies into my final "class."  I put class in quotes because it wasn't mandatory and it was really more of a party than a class, hence the brownies.

The recipe is in Nigella Lawson's How to Be a Domestic Goddess.  It is one of my favorite cookbooks ever.  However, I remember I made these brownies two or three years ago and didn't really like them.  I don't know what I did wrong that time, because this time they were excellent!  They were fudgy but not overly so, and they were quite chocolaty.  They are a really good, easy to make, staple brownie.  Every single brownie I brought to class was gone by the end of the hour!