Celebrating 100th Post with Rocky Road Brownies

I am celebrating!!! There is so much celebrate... I am celebrating motherhood and will continue to, forever... I am celebrating my lovely little girl... She has an unparalleled maturity and understanding to co-operate with me and yet is so innocent and naughty at the same time... I am celebrating women empowerment... I am celebrating the fact that I have some very satisfying hobbies... Speaking of which, I celebrate baking... I celebrate blogging... And I am celebrating the 100th post on this blog. Yes my dear friends, I have achieved a century on this blog.

Honestly, when I started this blog, I did not have too much of a hope that I will be able to continue blogging at a constant pace. I was not even sure, I would be baking/cooking something special often enough to blog about it.  But this hobby has kind of grown on me. I can steal a few minutes here and there to write up a post and quickly grab my camera for a few clicks, before plating up something I have cooked. 

However, it truly has been a rocky road. I am one of the few bloggers who does not put up posts for festival specials. I miss occasions - cakes on birthdays/anniversaries are not common on my blog... The upside is that on a lazy weekend afternoon I can get into a frenzied excitement and cook up something complicated or elaborate.

So what has kept me going?

• My lovely little girl - I owe this entirely to her. She in not a great eater... but she is a very good critic and if she loves something, the way she relishes it is very heart-warming. That expression keeps me going :) 
• The incredible ladies out there and their wonderful blogs... They are truly awe-inspiring... Those restaurant style dishes and the artistic decoration on their baked goodies... Those perfect pictures  with the apt props... Hats off to all of you!
• My enthusiastic and encouraging readers... You, my friends, are the true reason I strive to do better. I cannot wait to try something new and come back with another post, just to hear your feedback and comments...  
• My family – what would I do without their support… They are so sweetly supportive of my crankiness during one of those frenzied feverish times in the kitchen. 

The celebration is not over yet! Friends, please stay tuned for an exciting event announcement and a fabulous giveaway.

I baked these rocky-road brownies a while back. This was a part of the pantry clearance effort. I had half a bag of "no name" mini-marshmallows. After the initial fascination, my little one had lost interest in these chewy bits and they were lying in the pantry waiting to be consumed. I looked up joyofbaking.com and found the recipe for this rich chocolaty brownie topped with marshmallow, chocolate and nuts. There is no such thing as too much chocolate. Not for me anyways.

There is a reason, I decided to mark this my 100th post - out of the 15 odd posts in the drafts folder. It was truly a delightful experience to bake this, and it is aptly named for the tempo and temperament of the last one year that I have been blogging...

I baked these, while my little girl was playing with an older girl from my neighborhood. I served them both, these brownies warm from the oven and they were overjoyed. The older girl was so excited to know that I had baked these myself and apparently that was the first thing she went and told her mother, "Amma, Aunty had made such nice chocolate brownies. It was to good". That was a wonderful complement. Thank you, Nandita! 

Rocky Road Brownies (recipe source joyofbaking.com)
Ingredients:

4 ounces (120 grams) unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped - 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp
1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 cup (200 grams) granulated white sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs
3/4 cup (95 grams) all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt


Topping:
1/2 cup (85 grams) semi sweet or milk chocolate chips
1 cup (250 ml) miniature marshmallows (store bought or home made)
1/2 cup (50 grams) chopped nuts (walnuts, pecans, almonds, hazelnuts, peanuts, and/or pistachios) -- I omitted this


Method: Preheat oven to 160 degrees C. Butter, or spray with a non stick vegetable spray, an 8 inch (20 cm) square baking pan. Optionally you can line with parchment paper.


Melt the chocolate and butter in a large stainless steel bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water.  Remove from heat and stir in the sugar. Next, whisk in the vanilla extract and eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Finally, stir in the flour and salt.


Pour into the prepared pan and bake for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a few moist crumbs. 

Remove from oven and immediately sprinkle the brownies with the chocolate chips, miniature marshmallows and chopped nuts.  Return the brownies to the oven and bake for about 5 minutes, or just until the marshmallows start to melt.  Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack. Once completely cooled, slice and serve. Makes 16 brownies.

Verdict: These are sinfully delightful. First of all, if you can wait for the brownies to cool down before you cut into it, give yourself a pat. Secondly, if you can manage to stop with one piece, give yourself one more pat on the back. If not, don't worry; occasional binging is fine :)

Eggless Oats Brownies

 I have mentioned in my previous posts that eggless bakes are a hit with folks at home. This one has oats as one of its ingredients, so it immediately took my fancy. I found this recipe on Divya's blog long back. I baked these for my daughters snack time at school.

Eggless Oats Brownies
Recipe adapted from Divya's blog (divyascookbook.blogspot.com)

Ingredients

Whole wheat flour/Atta - 1 1/2 cups

Oats - 3/4 cup

Cocoa powder - 2 tbsp

Baking powder - 1 tsp

Dark Chocolate - 150 gms,melted and cooled

Dark Brown Sugar - 4 tbsp[I used white sugar]

Milk - 2 cups

Sunflower Oil - 5 tbsp

Method

Preheat oven to 180C--Grease/line an 8' square cake pan.

In a mixing bowl, mix together flour, oats, cocoa powder and baking powder.

In another bowl, mix together milk, sugar and oil.

Mix the liquid ingredients into the flour mix slowly.

Fold in the melted chocolate.

Transfer the batter into the pan and smooth the tops with a spatula.

Bake for 25 minutes,the centre will still be soft at this stage.

Place the pan on a rack and cool completely in the pan

When completely cool,cut into 16 squares.

Verdict: This one was a winner from the start. Eggless, whole wheat with dark chocolate. Oats are the added bonus in this recipe. This is definitely on my bake-often list :)

Blondies

Continuing from my previous post. Here are the promised blondies. I used the same recipe from joyofbaking and this time used sugar instead of Demerara sugar. These turned out so good. Gooey chocolaty and crunchy crust. This recipe was a hit at home... Definitely in my bake-often list :)

Walnut Chocolate-chunk Brownie

The Whole-Wheat brownies I made a while back, were a huge hit at home; I decided to try out the version with Eggs and tried adding nuts and chocolates this time. I followed the blondies recipe from joyofbaking.com. I just happened to add "Demerara sugar" instead of "light brown sugar" as stated in the recipe and I ended up with a brownie instead of a blondie :). I used walnuts instead of pecans as stated in the recipe. I plan to try the version with White sugar the next time. Stay tuned to find out how that turned out.

Whole-wheat Eggless Brownies

 I did not really know how exactly a brownie is different from say a quickbread, a shortbread cookie or a muffin, until I started baking. I used to see recipes for delicious chocolate brownies in the blog-sphere but I put off baking this brownie until I had ventured other known territories first. 

The only "Brownie" I was familiar with, was the lovely dark brown furry stray in the neighbourhood, who was taken away by the corporation one fine day following complaints :(. Anyways, that is another story.

Last month, I looked up recipes for brownies, since folks at home were too bored of cupcakes, vanilla and chocolate cakes and cookies. I came across the recipe for Eggless brownies on Divya's blog

I wanted to try it for two reasons: a) Eggless recipe, folks at home were tired of my Eggy bakes ;) and b) it is a microwave recipe, I don't have to take my baking pans out :).
I try to bake with whole wheat flour, as much as possible these days. So I substituted all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour. Here are the modification I made to the recipe from Divya's blog.

Ingredients

Maida - 1 cup (I used whole wheat flour)
Cocoa powder - 2 tbsp
Milkmaid- 200 gms (Half tin)
Butter - 1/2 cup
Baking powder - 1/4 tsp
Salt a pinchSugar - 2 tsp
Ripe Banana - 1 small one
Crushed Walnuts,Cashewnuts - about 2 tbsp (I omitted it)
Cinnamon powder - 1/2 + 1 tsp for dusting (The original recipe does not call for this, I added this)
Method

Melt the butter in Microwavefor 1 minute. Mix in the milkmaid, blend it to a smooth paste using a blender.
Mash the banana well and mix to the above butter & milkmaid mix.Add sugar and blend again to get a smooth paste.
In another bowl, sift the flour, cocoa, salt, cinnamon and baking powder. Then add to the butter mix and blend well.
Transfer the mix to a greased microwave safe dish.

Microwave this mix for 4 minutes. Let it rest in the microwave for a minute, then remove    to the wire rack for another 2 minutes. Dust with cinnamon powder. Wait for the brownie   to cool down completely before cutting. Warm the brownies in the microwave before          serving.
Verdict: The brownies were a hit! The cinnamony, eggless wheaty moist brownies just won over everyone :)