Sunday Cooking

This morning was a black tea drinking, cooking, and baking sort of morning. The snow fall has been steady but mostly very cold and not really a heavy accumulation sort (at least not yet). I have been cleaning up after dog accidents all week (including Rusty this morning - sigh) and really craving solid desserts all week but continually sort of "missed" with whatever I have tried to make do with in the house.

The black tea is helping to kick the headache and definitely brings more caffeine to the table than my green tea.

This first recipe I should have made mid-week. I should have baked any dessert mid-week. It would have done a TON for me.

Yes. That is peanut butter next to my white beans. The recipe is Chocolate Chip Blondies from the Web site Chocolate-Covered Katie. I spend entirely too many hours on her site. She is so much like me in philosophy and love affair with desserts! Imagine my surprise when I saw this recipe last night! Especially since I had done the white bean soak this week.

The mix taste really good. I went for 2 tsp vanilla because I am a vanilla person. I would say the beans gives it the grainy texture. I didn't have flax so after reading a lot of comments and considering I opted out of any flour at all. Some readers added normal flour, some left any flour out entirely and found them more fudge-like (which is what compelled me). I was also low on flour and needed it for another recipe. In retrospect I might have considered the quick oats substitution idea because I think that would be a nice flavor and texture as well.

I had to laugh though, part of what makes them "healthy" is the omega-3 from the flax which I omitted. I could care less about gluten free but I know a lot of people do.

I will probably need to experiment more with the baking time. You are trying to go for undercooked but the top of mine is clearly cooked enough. The center is still more undercooked so we will see how these set-up. I really liked the mild taste of them actually and would probably play with it again.

Thanks to Punk Post Kitchen I got a really great idea for veggie burger attempt number 2! Using her Carefree Curry Burger recipe I currently have some of my stew from this week mixed with rice and flour in the refrigerator. It is a great idea when you are burning out on the ridiculous amount of stew you have made.

I am looking forward to seeing how these come out when I bake them later. It is a good idea for leftovers though. I would never have thought about that. There is a ton of blog entries out there with the exact same problem I had with not being able to cook the burgers through the center. Definitely over-processing seems to be a common culprit so I was very careful this time.