Salted Black Cocoa Brownies, and the Eyjafjallajokull parfait

Oh, the power of persuasion.  I am so touched by everyone's incredible enthusiasm over the giveaway (BTW-- have you entered yet???)  Even though I haven't had the time to personally respond to all of your comments yet, I have been reading them all with great excitement!  I asked you all what you would do with black cocoa powder, and I've been loving the responses.  Man, you guys are creative--I mean, mole sauce with black cocoa?  Who would of thought of that!

An incredible number of you commented that you would make black cocoa brownies, and the more I read about black cocoa brownies, the more I started to really crave them.  Yes, the power of mob persuasion and mass suggestion at work.  So, the logical course of action was of course to whip up a batch of my own black cocoa brownies, just so you all know that it can be done.  And the results?  Fantastic.

Super chocolate-ty, super dense--nice and robust and dark.  Mm... this is what a brownie should be.  And, I am of the camp who believes that chocolate is greatly enhanced by a touch of salt, so the version I made here is salted black cocoa brownies.  I buttered the pan with salted butter (rubbing in a little bit of extra salt, just for good measure) and then topped the brownie batter with liberal sprinklings of coarse sea salt before baking.  The end result was a brownie that is so incredibly dangerous to have around the house, because it's so dark-chocolate-ty and yet not too sweet at all, hence you can just keep popping them into your mouth before you realize that you've devoured them all.  *looks about innocently*  I did manage to stay away from one pan of brownies (by wrapping them up in layers of saran wrap) long enough to take them into class today--at which point one person told me that she hesitated to even call these brownies because "brownie" did not seem worthy enough a name.  :-)

Of course, being me, I couldn't leave well enough alone, so I present to you another use of these salted black cocoa brownies, if you manage to stop eating them long enough to make it to this point: the Eyjafjallajokull parfait.  Yes, you will ask--why in the world am I naming these parfaits after Iceland's recently-infamous volcano?  Well!  First of all, these parfaits are made with plain Icelandic skyr, which are the perfect base of smooth, creamy, thick, and tart goodness.  Then, layered underneath and on top are alternatively the season's first strawberries, macerated in lemon juice and vanilla sugar, and chopped up cubes of salted black cocoa brownies.  For some reason, the skyr made me think of Iceland, and then the strawberries and black cocoa brownies made me think of lava and volcanic rock, respectively, sitting on top of a rich mountain of skyr, and thus was borne the name "the Eyjafjallajokull parfait."  Or, if you don't want to try pronouncing that, you can just call it the "Strawberry, black brownie, and skyr parfait."

Oh man, did these make the perfect afternoon snack yesterday or what.  The bites of dark chocolate and chewy brownie were balanced out really well by the lightness of the strawberries and the creaminess of the skyr.  Mmmm... I should have made them in larger mugs.  :-P

Anyways, thank you guys all again for your wonderfully sweet and thoughtful and awesomely fun to read comments in the last post!  Here are a few answers to a couple of recurring questions, just so I don't forget to address them later:

1.  I made the chocolate trees on the cake out of dark chocolate couverture, mixing in black cocoa powder to make the color darker (which, by the way, is another great use of black cocoa powder, as base for dark food colorings).  Then, I piped the melted chocolate onto silpats/parchment paper in the shape of trees and let dry completely.  You can also do this with tempered chocolate, and it will probably be even sturdier, but chocolate couverture is a good quick-and-dirty cheat. :-)

2.  Yes! the walk through the forest totally reminded me of the video game Myst.  Actually, the original title for "Descent" was "Descent into Mystverse."  I am a geek, just like the rest of you.

3.  Someone mentioned self-saucing pudding cake.  I am *so* intrigued by this.  Can anyone point me in the direction of a recipe?

4.  For those of you who have asked if you can buy prints: I just showed my collection so I haven't had any time to think about prints beyond the limited edition ones of the collection.  I will look into this further (maybe via imagekind) and get back to everyone!  If you are interested in the limited edition prints from the entire collection, in their original intended sizes, please contact me individually at s "at" shihbakes "dot" com.

[P.S.  How awesome is the word macerated, by the way?]


Read on for recipe...

Lemon blueberry skyr cheesecakes, and being adopted

Okay, wait.  My actual, real-life parents are going to freak when they read the title of this post.  Let me clarify.  I'm not adopted in real life (or at least, that *I* know of).  Nope!  But!  My blog and I have been adopted in Dine and Dish's wonderful Adopt-a-Blogger program, now in it's fourth cycle!

Adopt-a-Blogger is this cool program where veteran bloggers take a new foodie blogger under their wing to answer all of us new blogger's silly and simple-minded questions.  It's really a great deal for us newbies.  And, I am very honored to announce that I've been adopted by Kristen from Dine and Dish herself no less!  (On a side note, I must have some karma in this universe to be mentored by the Kristens of this world because my undergraduate thesis co-advisor's name was also "Kristin."  Coincidence much?)

Kristen runs such a great blog over at Dine and Dish, and she does so much that I can't even imagine doing, like planning a whole week's menu in advance.  I'm lucky if I even have the foresight to pick up enough frozen burritos and Hot Pockets to get me through the week (okay, now you are all going to question my culinary choices, but really! I eat far, far better when school isn't in session.  e.g., four to five course home-cooked meals.  My roommate can back me up on that.).  She's also doing a great 365 day photo challenge that you can follow via her Flickr stream.  Kristen has already been such a huge help in answering my questions, and participating in Adopt-a-blogger #4 has most definitely inspired me to make some of the long-needed changes that you see happening around the blog (like, the new header! and subscription links!).  So, I'm definitely grateful to be a part of this program and am looking forward to learning a ton.

Now, on to food...

Remember those meyer lemon ricotta pancakes with lemon curd and blueberries from a few weeks back?  Turns out that they were such a big hit that I really wanted to make a dessert encore with the same elements. At around the same time I was mulling the idea over, my roommate introduced me to these Cinnamon Graham cookies from Trader Joe's.  They're kind of like graham crackers, but on super steroids!  Packed with cinnamon-y flavor (oh boy, now I sound like a cereal commercial), the Cinnamon Grahams have this great, robust, earthy and wheaty texture to them, which actually reminded me of the texture of Finn Crisps (which, if you haven't tried yet, you must).  They were so much more interesting that regular graham crackers are as boring as cardboard in comparison.  Then, it hit me.  These Cinnamon Graham crackers would make an amazing cheesecake crust.  And everything fell into place.  May I present to you...

Lemon blueberry cheesecakes,

made with Cinnamon Graham crusts

Om yum yum!  These mini cheesecakes are infused with a rich blueberry reduction sauce, which packs them with creamy blueberry flavor.  Then, they're topped with light and tart meyer lemon curd for the ultimate lemon blueberry experience.  The cinnamon kick in the crusts makes them so much more interesting than your average cheesecake.  And, as a further tribute to my Icelandic roommate, these cheesecakes were made partially with Icelandic skyr, which is this yogurt-like cheese.  The Icelandic skyr lends these cheesecakes a great airy texture and tenderness, more so than when using all and only cream cheese.  And, blueberries + skyr is, I've been told, a classic combination of flavors.  I have to say, despite having questionable taste with their putrid shark, those Icelanders did get it right with their blueberry skyr.

I ended up making mini cheesecakes and a few larger, 4.5" ones, which I piled high with layers of lemon curd, blueberry sauce, fresh blueberries and a glaze of apricot jam.  While we sold the mini cheesecakes at a bakesale, the larger cheesecakes were all ours to devour.  Which we did, with great satisfaction.

Read on for recipe...

PotW: Buckwheat almond pancakes with cider-poached apples and Icelandic skyr

[last Pancake of the Week: Pumpkin sage pancakes with blackberry reduction]

Buckwheat almond pancakes

with cider poached apples

and Icelandic skyr

One of my favorite weekend rituals (besides making pancakes, of course) is getting tapioca tea from our favorite tea shop and then browsing the stacks at one of my favorite used bookstores, Bookbuyers, here in the South Bay.  It's been a pretty busy few weeks lately, so I haven't had the chance to do this, but finally this weekend, I made the excuse that I needed to go to the bookstore to look for potential Christmas gifts!  hehe.    Alas, what did I actually get at the bookstore but a book for myself: David Lebovitz's out-of-print Ripe for Dessert (brand-new, too!).  Merry early Christmas to me.

I absolutely adore Lebovitz's ice cream book, The Perfect Scoop, which is pretty much my bible for the summer months, so I was super-excited to be able to find one of his other books.  Flipping through it, I can't wait to try a bunch of the recipes!

Okay, so what does this have to do with pancakes, you ask?  Well, one of the first recipes in Ripe for Dessert is one for buckwheat cake with cider-poached apples, which immediately sounded like a great idea for pancakes to me.  And, what made it even better was that my roommate, who's Icelandic, left a container of awesome, awesome Icelandic skyr for me when she went home for Christmas, and the skyr, I thought, would be the perfect companion to buckwheat pancakes and poached apples.

Now, if you have never had Icelandic skyr before, I suggest that you go immediately to your local Whole Foods (which is where we've been able to find it) and pick some up in the yogurt section.  Skyr is technically a cheese, not a yogurt, but it's reminiscent of a yogurt and oh-so-thick and creamy good.  You must try some.  (And while this recipe uses plain skyr, if you want to eat it on its own, I recommend trying the blueberry.)

The buckwheat pancakes, while not the most appetizing color, are really fragrant and most definitely fill you up more than regular pancakes because they're so dense.  I'm not usually a syrup-on-pancakes type of girl, but syrup in this case is most definitely recommended.  Or do what I did and drizzle a bit of caramel sauce on top.  Or, even better, how about some British Golden Syrup?

Dan Jurafsky, writer of a great food and language blog, The Language of Food, was telling me that I must try some of this golden syrup, so I asked my friend, Lauren, to bring me some when she came back from Oxford!  I can't wait to dip into it, and I'm sure it would have been great on these pancakes, but I'm told that I need to make sticky toffee pudding, so that's what I'm saving the golden syrup for.  Yum nom nom.

In the meanwhile, enjoy this holiday week, everyone!  I'll be posting more Christmas treats, including cupcakes! and more chocolates for Christmas gift ideas.  Merry X-mas!

Read on for recipe...