Foodgawker finds

Photo summary of today's listings that caught my eye on Foodgawker. Clicking on the images direct you to the blog with recipes.

Junk inside your trunk

This week's recipes are high in fat, sugar and all things bad for your body but heavenly for your taste buds.

Some days I feel like exercising restraint on my diet by feeding it with healthy foods, other times I feel like abusing it with cookies, cakes and chips.

Today feels like the latter.

Nat and I had a Gossip Girl marathon and proceeded to consume chocolates, popcorn, chocolate caramel biscuits, Tim Tams, carrot cake, chocolate fudge Pop Tarts and chips. In addition to this, I've had white chocolate Kinder Bueno, Lindt dark chili chocolate, Lindt dark roasted almond chocolate and chocolate buttercream cake in the past 2 days. 

I still feel like doing my digestive system some more damage. These recipes would be a good start.

Pretzel Cookies with Chocolate and Peanut Butter Chips

From Sugar Cooking

Oh peanut butter chips, why won't you come to New Zealand?! I long for you so. Nat and I were having a debate over whether sweet and salty was a good combination. She said no, I said yes.

Mini Turtle Brownie Bites

From The Other Side of 50

Another topic Nat and I debated about over episodes of Gossip Girl was caramel. Turns out Nat doesn't like caramel. I've only recently began to form a liking for it. Either way, chocolate brownies with caramel sauce sounds damn good.

Snickers Caramel Cheesecake Cookies

From Picky Palate

The words in this recipe sound good on their own but better when strung together in a sentence. 

Peanut Butter Honey Brownies

From Spoonful of Sugar

You can't have junk food without peanut butter of some kind. In this recipe it's in the form of brownies with a honey filled centre. I like to think the healthiness of the honey offsets the calorific nature of everything else in the brownies.

Baked Doughnuts

From How to Eat a Cupcake

 

Funny how this is the only recipe of the ones listed that I'm actually excited to make. The reason being is that I can finally make doughnuts without using a fryer! I've come to believe that baking is a healthier method than frying, so these baked doughnuts sit on top of my list of things to bake in the near future.  

I feel like I've gained ten pounds just blogging about junk food. I've got to feed the fat kid inside of me!

He ain't heavy, he's my cupcake

Photo from Bake or Break

How can something that looks so delicious turn into something that looks so... so...

...fail?

To be fair, we took that cupcake out of the tin too early. So it just collapsed. After exercising patience, the cupcakes turned out like this:

It's still nothing like the picture though.

Photo from Bake or Break

The cupcakes were incredibly rich and heavy. Each cupcake was the same weight as a glass bowl. It sickens me to think that I ate 205 grams of half-baked brownie batter and melted peanut butter. But damn, was it worth it.

Brownie Peanut Butter Cups recipe from Bake or Break.

Bake off

Last week I participated in an informal "bake off". Initially I was asked to bake brownies, which scared me as my friend is known to make the "best brownies EVER". This is true; her brownies are rich and decadent with a mouthful of solid chocolate in every bite. How could I compete with a batch of knock-offs? The only way that I could survive this bake off with dignity in tact was if I baked brownies with a twist. Recipes that came to mind were blondies, peanut butter swirl brownies and cookie dough brownies. Luckily, a couple of days before the bake off I was requested to bake my dark chocolate cookies. Phew. I escaped baking-social suicide (?).

My friend brought her infamous brownies at the bake off. They were delectable and stole everyone's breath away. My dark chocolate cookies stood out in the 'biscuit category' but were overshadowed by said brownies and a batch of ice-cream cupcakes. Sigh. The dark chocolate cookies didn't stand a chance.

Anyway, these are a batch of brownies with a twist.

Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies
(Adapted from Donna Hay)

Ingredients:

• 185 g butter, melted
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder, sifted
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup plain flour, sifted

Cheesecake topping

• 285 g cream cheese, chopped and softened
• 1/3 cup caster sugar
• 2 eggs

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160C.
2. Place butter, cocoa, sugar, eggs and flour in a bowl and mix well until smooth. Spoon into a 20cm-square slice tin lined with non-stick baking paper.
3. To make the cheesecake, process cream cheese with sugar and eggs in a food processor until smooth.
4. Place large spoonfuls of the cheesecake mixture on top of the chocolate mixture and swirl with a butter knife.
5. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until set. Cool in the tin. Cut into squares to serve.

Makes 16.

Success comes in the form of brownies

After two failed attempts, I finally managed to bake something by myself that was, a) not burnt and b) edible. Everyone's tastebuds can stop crying now.

What I made one afternoon were a simple batch of brownies for a friend. I was so nervous throughout baking this as my failure rate has been incredibly high and seeing that these were for a friend, I had to be extra cautious. Which meant extra pressure. Perhaps pressure was what made me super pedantic (more so than usual), that I measured out everything exactly and made sure that I followed the recipe word for word (unlike this).

Peanut Butter and Nutella Brownies
(Adapted from The Craving Chronicles)

Ingredients:

• ½ cup butter, melted
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup plain flour
• ¼ cup cocoa powder
• ¼ teaspoon baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 4 tbsp (¼ cup) peanut butter (chunky or smooth)
• 4 tbsp (¼ cup) Nutella

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Line 8×8 inch or 7×11 inch pan with baking paper.
2. Measure the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt into a small bowl and whisk to combine.
3. Using an electric mixer, cream the sugar with the melted butter. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then add in the vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and mix until combined.
4. Put the Nutella and peanut butter in a small bowl and microwave until runny. Fold into brownie mix (don't completely combine the mixture if you want visible streaks of Nutella and peanut butter to appear on the brownie crust).
5. Pour batter into pan and bake for 25-30 minutes, until top forms a crust.

Print-friendly version of recipe here.

These brownies are not like your usual rich and fudgey brownies as they are fluffier and less dense. This may have been achieved through the use of an electric mixer, which the original recipe didn't call for.

If you live in New Zealand, the taste of these brownies are similar to Farmbake's peanut brownie cookies. Which are not bad if you're a fan of those biscuits. For me, I wish it was a tad more peanut buttery, but that's just being nitpicky. I should accept these little victories for as long as they last!