I’m putting myself on a diet. And by diet, I do mean a change in my eating habits that I have no intention of making permanent. Beach Trip is in two weeks, and it’s time to buckle down. My normal eating and exercise habits keep me healthy and slim enough to feel good most of the time. But most of the time, I’m not wearing a bathing suit.

So, for two weeks, I’m eliminating dessert. Sigh. At least Tuesdays with Dorie gives me a bit of an escape clause. I’m required to bake for this group, right? And while I can give the treats away, I am most definitely not going to give away something I haven’t tried myself.

And so I did eat one square of blondie. One little square. One teeny, tiny square. And that one square of thick, chewy, peanut buttery, chocolately cookie will have to hold me over until next week’s TWD recipe. Beach Trip can’t get here soon enough.

Nicole chose this, and she has the recipe posted. For the mix-ins, I used 1 cup (6 ounces) chocolate chips, 1½ cups (8 ounces) miniature peanut butter cups, and 1 cup (5 ounces) peanuts. I also decreased the brown sugar from 1½ cups to 1 cup and used salted instead of unsalted butter.

One year ago: Dorie’s Vanilla Ice Cream
Two years ago: Summer Fruit Galette

Certain desserts remind me of specific people. Chocolate plus cream plus butter on a big cookie is the perfect dessert for my sister’s husband (although he might pass on the cookie part – and maybe the cream and butter), so I made it a priority to make the tart noire when I saw my family over the 4th of July weekend. He cut himself a slice during the fireworks, then had some for “breakfast dessert” the next morning (as did I).

If I had looked one Tuesdays with Dorie recipe further, I might have made these br(rrr)ownies over the holiday weekend as well. I associate York Peppermint Patties with my sister; she would have been the perfect person to foist brownies with peppermint patty pieces onto. Me, I’m more of a peanut butter cup kind of girl.

These brownies, though, they are perfect for a York Peppermint Patty lover. Or maybe a Junior Mint, with their higher ratio of chocolate to mint, lover. It seems that those pieces of peppermint saturated the whole pan of intensely-fudgy-from-lack-of-any-leavener brownies to make essentially a huge Junior Mint.

Come to think of it, based on her candy choice at the movies, my mom would have loved these too. I really missed my opportunity to get other people to eat these brownies. Ah well…I guess I’ll have to eat them myself then. If I must.

Karen chose these, and she has the recipe posted.  I’m not sure if this makes a significant difference on the outcome, but I mixed my chocolate chip-sized patty pieces into the flour before folding the whole mixture into the rest of the brownie batter.  Otherwise they were too sticky, and I didn’t think they’d disperse evenly into the brownies.

One year ago: Brioche Plum Tart
Two years ago: Chocolate Pudding

Sometimes I wish I was one of those people who didn’t like rich desserts. I think it would keep me from eating a lot of rich desserts.

But I am not. I’m prudent enough to cut myself only a modest slice, but not prudent enough to not cut myself another and another modest slice. Never mind that what I’m eating is nothing but a mixture of chocolate, cream, and butter spread over a big cookie.

On the plus side, at least I get to enjoy rich desserts. Because missing out on a mixture of chocolate, cream, and butter spread over a big cookie would be a shame.

Dharmagirl chose this tart for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has the recipe posted.

One year ago: Tribute to Katharine Hepburn Brownies
Two years ago: Blueberry Pie

The best part about having a full-time job is having people to offload desserts to. No, I’m kidding, the best part is the money. No! It’s the feeling of self-worth I get from changing out of my pajamas before noon. Or it’s the belief that I’m making a difference in the world. The knowledge that I’m a contributing member of society. I don’t know, one of those.

Of course I carefully plan out every treat I bring in to share. Most importantly, it has to look enticing. Half-eaten leftovers obviously won’t do. It also needs to be easy to grab; no one wants to deal with forks and plates, they just want to grab a quick snack when they come in to refresh their coffee. I also want to provide a good variety – chocolate one week, fruit or vanilla the next; cupcakes one week, cookies the next. Finally, I like to (overthink things) make something new and interesting: instead of chocolate chip cookies, cream cheese chocolate chip cookies; instead of white cupcakes, margarita cupcakes; instead of brownies, espresso brownies.

People always thank me for bringing in treats, because they are polite and nice, and I always thank them for providing me an opportunity to do something I love. They also mention that I’m ruining their diets, but I figure it’s theirs or mine, and a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

My favorite brownie recipe is a little lighter, cakey-er, and moister than these, but I love this rich fudgy texture with the bitter espresso overtones. Plus they’re perfect to cut into tiny squares, which, once displayed in little crimped cups, satisfy all of the requirements for a treat to bring to work.

Two years ago: Yeasted Waffles

Printer Friendly Recipe
Triple-Chocolate Espresso Brownies (from Cooks Illustrated)

Either Dutch-processed or natural cocoa works well in this recipe.

5 ounces semisweet chocolate or bittersweet chocolate, chopped
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into quarters
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1½ tablespoons instant espresso powder or coffee powder
3 large eggs
1¼ cups (8.75 ounces) granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ teaspoon table salt
1 cup (5 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour

1. Adjust an oven rack to the lower-middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray an 8-inch square baking pan with nonstick vegetable cooking spray. Fold two 12-inch pieces of foil lengthwise so that they measure 7 inches wide. Fit one sheet in the bottom of the greased pan, pushing it into corners and up the sides of the pan; overhang will help in the removal of the baked brownies. Fit the second sheet in the pan in the same manner, perpendicular to the first sheet. Spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

2. In a medium heatproof bowl set over a pan of almost-simmering water, melt the chocolates and butter, stirring occasionally until the mixture is smooth. Whisk in the cocoa and espresso until smooth. Set aside to cool slightly.

3. Whisk together the eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt in a medium bowl until combined, about 15 seconds. Whisk the warm chocolate mixture into the egg mixture; then stir in the flour with a wooden spoon until just combined. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan, spread into corners, and level the surface with a rubber spatula. Bake until slightly puffed and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a small amount of sticky crumbs clinging to it, 35 to 40 minutes. Cool on a wire rack to room temperature, about 2 hours, then remove the brownies from the pan using the foil overhang. Cut into squares and serve. (Do not cut brownies until ready to serve; brownies can be wrapped in plastic and refrigerated up to 5 days.)

Most of us probably had the same first experience with plain yogurt. You think it’s going to be yogurt, but not quite so vanilla-ey! And then, ew, wtf, this tastes like sour cream. Force down a few bites; toss in trash. That was the end of my plain yogurt experience for several years.

And then I made an important connection – it tastes like sour cream, but it’s good for you! And now I use it everywhere – in sauce for fish tacos, on baked potatoes, on pancakes with jam, and now, in chocolate frosting. I held my breath waiting to see if it would curdle or if it would mix with melted chocolate to form a smooth icing, and I am pleased that it worked wonderfully. What a simple but luscious frosting recipe.

Low-fat Greek yogurt (my grocery store just started carrying Fage!) might not have been quite as good a replacement for sour cream in the cake itself. Fat in cake leads to moistness, and my cake seemed just a tad dry. A little cherry jam and chocolate yogurt frosting fixed that right up, and I’ve hardly been able to step away from this cake since, shaving dainty slivers off here and there throughout the day, hoping Dave doesn’t notice that half of the cake has disappeared.  But it’s okay, because I used yogurt, and not sour cream.

Amy chose this cake for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has the recipe posted. Besides the yogurt substitutions discussed above, I doubled the salt in the cake.

One year ago: Mixed Berry Cobbler
Two years ago: Coconut Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise

Dave has recently encountered an enviable problem. After starting to exercise a few months ago for the first time in years, he started losing weight too fast.

Losing weight. Too fast.

So now we’re trying to come up with ways to get him more healthy calories that don’t create much more work. Hard-boiled eggs, peanut butter, protein shakes, and bread. Making a loaf of bread every couple of weeks for him to eat at work does require more effort, but it isn’t work, because I like making bread.

I haven’t bought bread since moving to New Mexico last winter, and I haven’t made pure white bread since discovering I could adapt any recipe to be at least partially whole wheat with no detriment to flavor or texture. It worked just as well with this bread as it has in the past, giving me a light, tender loaf of bread made a little more special with a spiral of raisins and sugar and cocoa. Not that I got to eat more than a slice, since most of this loaf went to He Who is Super Annoying Because He Gets to Eat Twice as Much Food as Me.

Susan chose this bread for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has the recipe posted. I mixed 2 cups (9.6 ounces) of whole wheat flour with ¾ cup of the milk and ½ teaspoon of the salt and let it sit overnight before combining it with the rest of the ingredients. And for whatever reason, 1 cup of raisins was way too much for me and they all fell out when I cut into the bread. But no one else had this problem, so apparently I’m just a weirdo. Still, next time, ½ cup of raisins.

One year ago: Honey Peach Ice Cream
Two years ago: Cappuccino Cream Puff Rings

With the pace of life picking up as it has been lately, I haven’t had many opportunities to bake desserts. Nearly all of my baking lately has been associated with Tuesdays with Dorie. Making a dessert that someone else chooses for you is fine when it’s one recipe in many, but when it’s all that you ever get to bake…well, it’s tempting to tweak the recipe to something that’s more fun for you, whether the fun is in the eating or the making.

For these white chocolate brownies, it meant skipping the meringue, raspberries, orange zest, and ground almonds for various reasons, most having to do with laziness. It certainly sounds like I was trying to make these as bland as possible, doesn’t it? To play up the mild sweet flavor of white chocolate, I used vanilla sugar instead of regular sugar. I also used cake flour instead of regular, thinking that the lower gluten content of cake flour would mimic the combination of higher gluten all-purpose flour and no-gluten ground almonds.

After baking, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to present this as a cake or as brownies. The white chocolate flavor is subtle, although you can find it if you’re looking. The texture is light and fluffy and moist, just like a perfect vanilla cake. In the end, I defaulted to laziness again. Brownies don’t require any additional topping like a cake would, so these are brownies. Good brownies, in a light fluffy cakey kind of way. Plus, if I ever need a white chocolate cake recipe, I’m good to go!

Marthe chose this recipe, and she has it posted. Other than the changes listed above, I doubled the salt. A lot of TWD members had problems with their brownies coming out of the oven undercooked after the recommended baking time, but since I skipped the meringue and made a quarter of the recipe, the baking time in the book wasn’t relevant to me anyway.

One year ago: Cappuccino Muffins
Two years ago: French Chocolate Brownies

The rest of the country (hemisphere, I suppose) is gearing up for summer. Here in the desert though, we’ve been there for a while. This weekend Dave and I hiked over seven miles in 90 degree weather. It’s a dry heat though! (Actually, the hike wasn’t bad at all – it was either shady or windy the whole time, so although we were hot, we weren’t dying. And the dry heat does make a difference.)

the beginning of homemade chocolate ice cream

Ice cream pie is perfect for the weather we’ve been having. The specific ingredients called for here aren’t perfect for me though. I eat so many bananas as snacks that the idea of adding them to chocolate ice cream for dessert didn’t sound appealing. Strawberries, however, can be added to most any dessert.

Oh, except maybe not one that’s going to be stored in the freezer like this. Sliced strawberries between the crust and the ice cream turned into ice cubes in the freezer; I should have given them a dip in vodka before freezing them to keep them from freezing so solidly. Other than that, what’s not to love about this dessert? I don’t need to tell you that chocolate ice cream and strawberries are a tempting combination – especially when it’s a hundred degrees out.

Spike chose this recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has the recipe posted.

One year ago: Chipster-Topped Brownies
Two years ago: Pecan-Honey Sticky Buns

Hey, didn’t Tuesdays with Dorie already make these, a chocolate version, a long time ago? And didn’t I already lodge a complaint against cookies that are more add-in than dough? Seriously, sometimes the chocolate chips in chocolate chip cookies get in my way.

And wait, didn’t I already decide that, hey, add-ins maybe aren’t such a bad thing because these are some darn good cookies.

And you know what else about these cookies? There’s only eight tablespoons of butter/shortening in the whole batch! That’s about half as much as most cookies. Which makes it all the harder not to justify having just one more.

Mary chose these and she has the recipe posted. I quadrupled, yes, that’s right, quadrupled the salt. Seemed perfect to me.

One year ago: Chocolate Cream Tart
Two years ago: Fluted Polenta and Ricotta Cake

Somehow with all of my random kitchen junk, I didn’t have a full-size bundt pan for the longest time, but I finally got one recently. This was its first use, and I was so excited about my perfectly browned, beautifully scalloped, marbled bundt cake. Too bad I didn’t take any pictures of it before this:

Fortunately, enough of the cake was intact to cut some slices, not that I have any problems eating cake bits. And the cake bits, they were good – rich and dense with contrasting vanilla and chocolate bites.

However, one thing I’ve learned is that if dessert isn’t divided into neat portions, it’s all too easy to grab a bite here and another there until I’ve eaten far more than just one serving.

So I took that ziploc bag full of broken cake, crushed it up with the other two cakes I’d dropped at the same time, added some cream cheese frosting, and dipped everything in chocolate. Yes, I added frosting and chocolate in order to eat less dessert. So far it hasn’t worked.

Erin chose this cake for Tuesdays with Dorie, and she has the recipe posted.

One year ago: Banana Cream Pie
Two years ago: Lemon Cream Tart