Whopper Brownies and Raspberry Meringue Cookies

My younger sister, Juliana, and I have been planning to get together to bake something/have a dance party for weeks now, but it kept getting put off.  She finally came over this afternoon, and the results were of epically sugary proportions.

My original thought was to make meringue cookies, since I had leftover egg whites from a chocolate silk pie I made last week.  But since we needed to wait for the egg whites to reach room temperature, we warmed up our cooking skills with some Whopper brownies.

I got the idea for malted milk chocolate brownies after making the aforementioned chocolate silk pie last week.  It was supposed to be a chocolate malted silk pie, but the malt powder flavor just didn't come through.  I thought I'd give the malt powder another chance to prove itself, but with the aid of an entire movie theater-size box of Whoppers.

This recipe is based on the basic brownie recipe from my grandmother's copy of Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook.

You'll need:
2 squares semisweet baking chocolate
1/3 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
3/4 flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. malt powder
1 5-oz. box of Whoppers

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Grease an 8-inch square pan with a little butter.

Melt the chocolate and the butter and place in a large bowl.  Beat in the sugar and eggs.  After it is thoroughly mixed, beat in the flour, baking powder, salt, and malt powder.

You'll need to break up the Whoppers before adding them to your brownies.  We did it this way:

Which is to say, we sealed the Whoppers up in a plastic bag and then Juliana jumped on them.

You could also smash them up with a rolling pin or put them in a food processor or something, but after seeing this method, why would you want to?

Add the crushed Whoppers to the batter, reserving about 2 tbsp.  Mix well.

Spread the batter into the pan and then sprinkle the reserved crushed Whoppers over the top.  This makes a nice caramelized crust.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the top of the brownies have a dull color.  Cool and then cut.  This recipe should make about 16 brownies.

For our next trick, we made raspberry meringue cookies, based on this recipe by Sandra Lee.

You'll need:

1/2 cup egg whites

1 tsp. raspberry extract

1/4 tsp. cream of tartar

1 cup powdered sugar

3 drops red food coloring

Preheat oven to 225 degrees.  Line two baking sheets with aluminum foil.

In a large bowl, beat together the egg whites, raspberry extract, and cream of tartar with a whisk until the mixture gets frothy.  Then add powdered sugar by tablespoon.  Continue whisking while adding the sugar.  Add food coloring, and keep beating until the mixture forms stiff peaks (as Juliana said to the meringues, "I want you to make Madonna's tits from the '80s").  This took us about 30 minutes with our whisk.  You could go a lot faster with an electric mixer.

Juliana demonstrates the type of exercises you'll need to do if you want to beat the whites by hand.

Spoon mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a medium star tip, then pipe into 2-inch spirals on the baking sheets.

Like so.

Bake in the over for about 50 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through.  When they are finished baking, turn off the heat on the oven, crack open the door, and allow the meringues to dry out for about 10 minutes.  Then you can just pluck them off the aluminum foil.

You'll get cookies like this:

This recipe made about 30 cookies.

They were slightly on the flat side, and more brown than pink, but they tasted airy and delicious.  Plus, the shapes were pretty hilarious.  Clearly we need more practice (and maybe an electric mixer), but this seemed like a reasonable first attempt.

Hearty Lentil and Chickpea Soup

There is very little more depressing than a sunless Saturday in Chicago in late February.  In fact, if you asked me what I did today, I would have to think very hard (I finished a collection of Truman Capote essays, but mostly I sat around and thought about what I would do if I had the energy to go outside).

This kind of day.

Around late afternoon, someone on my hallway started cooking something that smelled extremely chicken-y, and not in a good way.  Clearly the answer was to cook my own good-smelling meal to overwhelm the stench.

My mother has been telling me for weeks now that I should eat more lentils.  So I thought I would try to make a chickpea and lentil soup.  After investigating some recipes, they all called for either exotic spices (which I don't have) or a slow-cooker (which I also don't have).  So here's my own riff on a fragrant, vegetarian, and protein-heavy soup for a gloomy day.

You'll need:

1 medium yellow onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 carrots, chopped
2 tbsp. olive oil
2 15 oz. cans of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup lentils
1 28 oz. can tomato puree
2 cups vegetable stock (I used Better than Bouillon, which has the added advantage of having all the salt you could possibly want in a soup)
1/2 cup black olives
Black pepper
Cinnamon

Sauté the chopped onion in a small pan in the olive oil for 3–4 minutes, until it starts to soften.  Then add the minced garlic and chopped carrots, sautéing for an additional 2–3 minutes.  Remove from heat.  Spice with black pepper and cinnamon to taste.

Add everything together in a big pot and put it over medium heat, partially covered.  Bring to a boil, and cook for 30–40 minutes, or until the lentils are cooked.

I put a nice dollop of 2% Greek yogurt on top, but otherwise this soup is vegan-friendly.  I'm estimating 5–6 big bowls of soup from this recipe.  Now I just need to figure out how to store all the rest of this...

Let's Eat!

I'm a college student on a budget (both financially and in terms of time), but I still like to eat well.  Solution?  Lots of home cooking, particularly on the weekends.  Check back on this blog for photos, recipes, and stories of what I like to call seat-of-the-pants cooking.

Featuring your sous-chef, Rizi Bizi:

Bon appetit!