February 9, 2011
Baking brownies has been one of my favourite things to do, not only for us to eat at home as desserts, but as a give-away as a small birthday gift or as a token we bring along when visiting friends.
I first started baking it impromptu sometime last year, and I have not looked back since. This is a recipe I found off the Internet awhile back (of which I modified a little), but for the life of me, I cannot remember where I found the original recipe or why I have not put up the recipe then.
If you like non-cakey brownie, this one is for you. It is definitely far from cakey, it is super moist, almost fudgey-like, and not at all too sweet. Goes down really well with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.
Deep, Dark, Moist Fudge-like Brownie
2015-07-14 17:02:28
- 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 tbsp. good quality cocoa powder (the darker the better and I use Van Houten)
- 1/4 tspn salt
- 1 stick of unsalted butter, plus more for pan
- 4 ounces (113 grams) of unsweetened baking chocolate
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup light brown sugar
- 3 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 packet (340 grams) of semisweet chocolate chips
- A handful of macadamia nuts, almonds and hazelnuts – roughly chopped and lightly roasted
- Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Butter up a pan of your choice and line with wax paper. Butter up the wax paper.
- In a medium bowl, sift together flour, cocoa powder, and salt; set aside.
- In a large saucepan, heat butter on low to melt. Add the cooking chocolate, and stir constantly until mixture is smooth. Remove from heat and stir in both sugars until combined. Let cool slightly.
- When cooled, whisk in the eggs and vanilla into the saucepan of butter and chocolate mix. Keep moving the batter around until combined and no longer grainy-looking. Add flour mixture to batter and stir just until combined.
- Stir in chocolate chips and the nuts
- Pour batter into prepared pan; smooth top with a greased spatula. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a just a few moist crumbs attached (28 to 30 minutes).
- A good tip and learning I got is not to over bake more than 30 minutes. Make sure you let it cool completely first. Cut into pieces and serve or store in the fridge.
Grubbs n Critters https://grubbsncritters.com/
Try it! Try it!
February 7, 2011
Spud’s officially half a year old!
That means, we now have been parents for a pathetic 6 months, and still on a steep learning curve as Spud develops along. It has to be said though that despite the struggle, the last 2 months or so have been somewhat better as compared to the first two months of her life. We now cope better as we get more attuned to her idiosyncrasies, and getting better at figuring her out in terms of what may or may not work for her and us. It also helps that she is slightly less cranky.
Besides starting on a little bit of solid, Spud also has had her first rite of passage just a few weeks ago when she fell off the bed. (oops!) While I reckon it was just something that has to happen to a baby one of these days, thank goodness the fall was not a very major one. It was still a good half a meter drop off the bed, but we were ever glad it was nothing too serious. It however, reminded us on how much more mobile she is going to get very soon!
These days Spud’s inching her way around quite fast. She is not properly crawling yet, but she does creep on her stomach like a worm, using her legs to steer to the left, right or around and even chasing after the cats whenever she sees them near her. She clamours and start grabbing anything and everything that comes in her way.
She is a bundle of energy. She cannot keep still — always moving around and looking out for things to see, touch, grab. At the same time, she is also getting very vocal, babbling away all the time. Her squeals have turned into EAR PIERCING SCREAMS even, and I am not exaggerating when I say that her screams have actually started to hurt my ear drums pretty bad!
We are currently finding it hard to keep up with her recently. She uses up all our reserved energy in the daytime and it becomes especially hard for us to stay awake when she refuses to go down for a nap!
I wonder if this is what they call a “bundle of joy”.
February 6, 2011
We have been putting off buying the high chair for Spud for a long time simply because we did not know what to get. The different types and designs we have seen in the departmental stores had been a little overwhelming as well since we have no idea what we should be looking out for. To top it all, we had, several times, encountered less than knowledgeable staff working in the department stores who do not seem to very knowledgeable about what they are selling when we started asking questions about those high-chairs. A shame.
Then we were told about Tripp Trapp® by Stokke – apparently marketed as the “only child’s chair that can take you from baby to adult” and (quote-unquote) a very sturdy chair that is designed with safety in mind. In our minds, that kind of sounded awesome already, since the ones which we have seen looked rather flimsy.
We have not seen the brand in any of the major departmental stores while we were scouring for a high-chair then, and thought that we may never be able to find it here. However, we found out later that the chair is actually sold in a specialty store right here in Bangkok, called Naturally Bebe. (The staff there was helpful and quite knowledgeable)
While we bought into the concept of Tripp Trapp®, we did think that the price was a little bit on the exorbitant side. We then decided with a slightly cheaper alternative that they have in stock – Highchair Advance by Cotinfant. Everything is packaged up with the cushion, straps as well as table-top and it was nice that these things were NOT being sold separately.
Verdict: Not only it is super sturdy, it is also a very well thought design, with an eye for detail. The assembly was relatively simple to begin with. Some other features which we thought makes the design smarter are small details like:
- Having a little metal guard at the back of the chair where you can put your foot to adjust the height,
- Soft covers underneath the legs to prevent scratching of the floor (it just glides across the floor when you move it from one place to another)
- Strap covers (No extra charge for that too!!)
- Easy to remove table top
All in all, (we think) it is a good buy for Spud to enjoy her meal-times on this high-chair while getting used to a little bit of table manners as she is currently being slowly introduced to solids.
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| Image from Google Images |
