citizen of the planet

You know, as I was writing last night’s post I was passing in and out of consciousness.  OK, so maybe that’s making things sounds much more dire than they actually were.  I was just really tired and actually had difficulty just completing the entry.  At the bar, by the third Strongbow Erika was telling me that I had the sleepy eye thing going on.  Yeah, I’ve actually noticed that before.  It seems that when I have alcohol I tend to just look fatigued.  I don’t go Asian red, but I just look like I haven’t slept in 36 hours.  I guess it’s true though: I really was tired.  And walking over to Yonge and Bloor after a long night out probably didn’t help me out either.

Anyway, in yesterday’s post I meant to post pictures of the foie gras poutine as well as the remnants of the Belgian chocolate fondue that we shared. Unfortunately, my sleep baked mind just couldn’t manage that.  So here they are.  Yes, they were both awesome and tasty.

If you’re with me on Twitter you’ll have seen me tweeting about this baking project. This is a full post summarizing the results.

So. After church a few weeks ago I was flipping channels and came across an episode of Eat, Shrink & Be Merry on the Food Network. In that particular episode they were battling against La Rocca over chocolate cheesecake. They managed to come up with a rich looking chocolate cheesecake that was lower in fat with higher protein content. They dubbed it the: Shockolate Cheesecake (link to recipe). Shocking, indeed. They subbed out part of the cream cheese with cottage cheese. It was all run through a blender so no one would have noticed a change in texture. They swore that it tasted as if you’d have used all cream cheese. The finished product won in the taste test side by side. At that point I figured that it would make a good project to do one weekend.

I went out to No Frills on Saturday and picked up the necessary ingredients. The light sour cream was 5% milk fat. I honestly would have thought the 1% was the light one like with milk, but I guess that’s different with sour cream. I didn’t want to use the non-fat stuff (which was the 1%) because apparently you can taste the difference. The recipe also used 1% cottage cheese and light cream cheese. All healthier, but would it be obvious?

Assembling it was actually really easy. I say that pretty often, but seriously, this was simple. I used a brownie mix for the crust. Mixing the batter involved adding water, and egg, and oil and using a spoon. The cream cheese involved stuffing the milk ingredients into a blender, melting some chocolate (put a metal bowl over a pot of boiling water–easy) and combining some dry ingredients, then mixing it all together. EASY. Honestly, my main concern was ending up with a really cracked end product after baking. I tried to follow a really gradual cooling process. I cracked the door open a little bit, then widened the door a little bit more. About 45 minutes into cooling, I had a look and it was still in one piece. I was quite happy. Next time I checked though I saw that the thing developed a big-ass crevasse the size of the Grand Canyon. I was disappointed. Sure, it’d still taste great (I assumed) but I was hoping for a perfect end result. The crack made for a great picture though. Maybe I beat the batter too much–especially after adding the eggs. Maybe I sped the cooling process way too much. Who knows?

After it cooled to room temperature, I let it cool in the fridge overnight. At lunch today I cut up some strawberries and melted some chocolate. I decorated the top with all of that, and honestly, you can’t even tell that the crack was there. We ate the cheesecake after lunch. The recipe said to cut it thinly because it’s particularly rich feeling. Holy crap, they were right. That was a ridiculously rich, chocolaty cheesecake. I approve! Two thumbs up! Thing is, I can’t eat much of it, like, at all. I know it’s lower fat and such, but damn, it doesn’t feel like it at all. I know now that I have another good recipe on hand that’s bound to impress.

Next time, I want to consider using a classic graham cracker crust. I’ve also been thinking of using something other than chocolate. Perhaps mint? I think that would be a grasshopper cheesecake, yes? Thing is, it’ll be a very long time before I even try doing this recipe again. It’s great, but it’s the kind of thing that requires a lot of time between instances.

Just some random things in my head about today’s trip to the Ex.

• I passed by Super Corn Dogs and spotted the notorious deep fried Mars bar.  I told myself that I wanted to try it out, but only later on.  After Kyleen and I sampled a few things, we were about to head out of the Food Building, but I stopped and said that I had to try the Mars bar before leaving or else I’d be thinking about it.So, I went there and ordered it.  The cashier was sort of in disbelief that someone actually ordered the damn thing.  My friend and I were joking about how bad for you it must be.  The cashier agreed.  We got a kick out of that, in that you know it’s going to be horrible for you if the people behind the counter were also recoiling in horror.  Well, they took a Mars bar out of the wrapper, dipped it in the corn dog batter and dunked in the fryer.  While we were waiting, we commented on the posters of the Mars bar in the booth.  The cashier commented that it didn’t even look like a Mars bar.  We commented that it looked like a deep fried turd.

  Well, I got it but waited for a few minutes before digging in.  I wanted to take it outside and have people witness me eating the darn thing.  I offered some to Kyleen but she refused outright (smart move there).  The novelty of the item was certainly interesting.  The taste wasn’t horribly bad, but really, it’s just a melted mars bar trapped in batter.

• We went to the Direct Energy Centre after the Food Building.  My hands were still kind of gross from the chicken wings that we had.  We passed by a running hot tub in the Home Pavilion and she suggested that I discreetly dunk my hands it to get rid of the grease.  Well, I did so, pretending to just be feeling the warmth of the water.  I took my hands and walked away.  I waved them around to air dry them.  I gave them a sniff, and the first words that came out of my mouth: “my hands smell like ass.”CLASSY.
• We visited the exhibit outlining the history of the modern day toilet.  We were entertained by the historical value of the info and artifacts.  Apparently back in the old days some Pacific Island cultures used mussel shells for toilet paper.  Now, when I read this, the first thing that popped into my head was Demolition Man where Stallone’s character was figuring out how to use the three shells in the bathroom in place of toilet paper.
• We returned to the Food Building to get some cheesecake.  The guy at the counter was outright rude to the two of us.  He was insulting to my friend and he downright ignored me even when I made eye contact.  Jackass!  That better be some good cheesecake.
• Three blocks of fudge: deadly.
• We met back up with her daughter after a few hours at the Ex.  Kyleen had brought her a slice of the creme brulee cheesecake form that asshold vendor.  Alex gobbled it down with gusto. Later during dinner I mentioned that there was still a slice of cheesecake in the their hotel room.  Alex said that she wanted it, but her mother mocked her in the most ridiculous screeching ugly southern accent that she could manage: “I waaant ma cheesecake!“  OH LORD, that made me laugh.

A week or two ago I picked up The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook by Ina Garten after seeing it at a lower than expected price at Wal-Mart. God, is there anything that that store can’t undercut? Yeesh. Anyway, when flipping channels, if I see her show playing on the Food Network I often stop to have a look. A lot of what she does looks pretty heavy, but the presentation is often really good. I’ve been wanting to try something of hers out for a while, which was a reason of mine to get her book.

Well, the first thing I attempted from the book was her recipe for Outrageous Brownies. I saw her bake it in an episode where she was taking stuff to the beach. She baked these huge brownies and stuffed the results into Chinese take-out containers. They looked awesome. So when I saw the recipe in the desserts section of the book I was eager to give it a go. So last Saturday I went to the store and gathered all the ingredients. I was shocked at just how expensive some of these recipes can be. Seriously. With the pounds of chocolate, the walnuts, butter, and vanilla the cost quickly went up. Luckily the recipe has a high yield, but man it’s something that I can’t do all that often.

Putting it all together was pretty simple. The chocolate and butter mixture was all velvety smooth and shiny. I’d never really played with melting chocolate in the past so this was pretty awesome. I followed the recipe pretty closely, except for the fact that I used 6 large eggs instead of the 6 extra-large eggs that were needed. I didn’t think it would be that much of an issue. Seeing it all come together gave me a certain amount of joy. There’s this underlying creative force that happens with baking that’s really rewarding if you let it happen. When I put it in the oven I was waiting with excitement to see how it all turned out. Well, when it came out, it was kind of duller than I expected in comparison to some of the other store-bought brownies. After cutting it up, each piece was really quite crumbly. I was expecting it to be rather fudgy, but instead it came out like a bit of a dry cake. Sure, it tasted awesome, but the consistency and look wasn’t right. I was rather disappointed but decided not to blame the recipe.

Anyway, today we have a get together at our house, so I thought it was a great chance to give it all another go. I follow the recipe as closely as possible again, but this time I used 7 eggs instead of 6. I figured that the extra egg would make up for the lack in size. Again, it all came together pretty easily. When I pulled the result out of the oven I was in total shock. The crust was all shiny and really gleamed under the stove lights. See, this was the look I was going for. After cooling down, I had a bite and daaaamn was it good.

I cut it all up and set up a nice pile for the guests. So far everyone that’s eaten a piece has complimented me on it. So yeah, Barefoot’s Outrageous Brownies were a success for me. I’m not going to post the recipe here (ask me if you want), but I can at least say that if you do pick up the recipe it will turn out rather well. I will at least post some pics here showing the progress during baking.

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.