Almost Spicy Brownies

Ever since I read (and saw) Chocolate, I've been fascinated by the idea of chocolate with chilies in it. And come to think of it, my favorite chocolate bar, the one that I'd rather have than a whole box of Hershey's, is a slightly spicy coconut curry variety from 3400 Phinney. But I've never used anything spicy with chocolate when I've baked with it. And since I was in the mood for brownies last night, and I had some decent chocolate bars, one of which had chilies mixed in, I figured, hey, why not. The proportions for this recipe come from the Cooks Illustrated Brownie Recipe. I've halved the recipe and made a few changes to incorporate the type of chocolate I had. It make a cake pan or a 8 by 8 brownie pan full of lovely, dense and just barely spicy (more warming) brownies. Just the thing for a cool, crisp weekend.

6 T butter, diced
3 ounces of 85% cocoa chocolate.
5 ounces of chili chocolate (I used Lindt)
1/2 c + 2 T flour (I used bread flour and liked the results, but AP flour would be fine I think)
1/8 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 T flour
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 325

In a double boiler melt the chocolate and butter. Set aside to cool slightly. In a medium bowl mix the flour (minus the 1 T at the bottom) the baking powder and salt. Add the sugar to the melted chocolate and then whisk in the eggs one at a time. Fold the wet mixture into the dry ingredients. In a small bowl toss the remaining 1 T flour with the chocolate chips until they are well coated. Discard any excess flour and add the chips to the brownie mixture. Pour into a well greased pan and bake until a toothpick comes out almost, but not quite, clean. For my oven this was 27 minutes. Check every 2 or 3 minutes after the 20 minute mark so they don't over cook. Cool for about 30 minutes before removing from pan and slicing.

Clementine Box Storage

I am generally (if you hadn't guessed by now) a clean up after each activity and put things away kind of girl. What can I say, I like things to be tidy. But every since the advent of the magical playdoh recipe, rolling, cutting and squishing dough has become a regular part of our day. Rather than fetching and putting it away three or four times a day, the playdoh and various cutters have lived in an old clementine box on our dining room table pretty much constany for the past month and a half. Size-wise, the box is perfect. If you've never salvaged a clementine box for corralling doo-dads, your missing out. They are sturdy, stackable and perfect for keeping everything from tools to art supplies in. I have a stash of them in the basement and the guest room closet holding all kinds of bits and bobs. There's just one problem.

They are kind of ugly.

Well, not always, last week I bought a box of clems before we really needed them because the box had "Darling Clementine" painted on it's sides. It's vintagey looking and fun and looks pretty cute with my mason jars full of thread nestled inside. But most of the boxes we've gotten aren't so spiffy, the playdoh holder included.


So since I can't see an end in site to our current playdoh love (we've moved on to green from our original blue batch because someone fed most of the blue to the dog. I'd be shocked except Nigella will eat anything, she's a child's dream dog. Broccoli? Sure, Eggplant? Yes Please. Playdoh? yummy! Playmobil dolphin? Absolutely - well that one didn't go down that well with the kids. But hey, it's a good reason to keep their toys picked up!) I decided to do something to make the box more live-with-able. Enter Modge Podge.

I'll be honest, this is not the easiest thing to decoupage, mostly because it's not smooth. Clementine boxes are put together with big nasty staples which results in a slightly lumpy finish. But even lumpy was better than how it started.

I took apart a couple of old High Five Magazines which, by the way, are the best thing I've found for recycling into kids crafts. Tons of fun art, poems and pictures and fairly sturdy paper. While Evelyn practiced scissor skills (left handed or right? She's not totally sold on either....) I pasted and podged.



Instead of trying to cut the edges to fit the slightly uneven sides of the box, I used larger pieces of paper and then went back and trimmed with a razor blade which worked pretty well as long as I was patient enough to let things dry all the way before trimming, which I sometimes wasn't. But all in all I like the result and am thinking of making another for the markers and paper that spend most of their time on the coffee table. Would it be terrible though to make that one match the living room decor????

Oh, and here's a tip that I'm sure I learned when I was studying to be a kindergarten teacher but forgot when I had children and part of my brain disappeared. Dont set out all the cookie cutters all the time. We have a HUGE bowl of them on a high shelf in the playroom and every few days I pick ten or so to put in the box, rotating them through. Having less choice actually makes her more interested, and getting to see what cutters are in the box is always a fun surprise. Geesh, you would think that one would have stuck. Blame it on Mommy Brain...

Spring Hopes Eternal

That was not snow I saw fluttering down this morning. It is not in the forecast for tomorrow. It will all be melted away by this weekend so I can get to work on my garden. I'm sure of it. I'll keep saying it over and over until it's true...

Ok, so none of that is true. I wish it was because I'm ready for spring. I've never been so ready for spring in my life. Evelyn and I went out the yard yesterday, her to swing, I to knit in my chair. It LOOKED like spring. Muddy, yes, but the sun was out. Surely it would be warm enough for some desperately needed outside time. After about ten minutes we gave up and came in, fingers blue, shoes muddy beyond recognition.

But despite the coming snow (sigh) and the cold and the wind (I sound like a broken record don't I?) I've decided to move ahead with planting. Today I planted out three flats of flower seeds, now sitting in a row on my little mudroom window greenhouse. Tomorrow I'll get the lettuce going, and maybe the bok choy. The seeds I started last month are sprouting nicely, making me smile whenever I come in the mudroom door from a cold walk, or even a cold dash from the car. Spring will come. It will. At least, I hope it will.

Lazy Day Gnomes

It's been one of those days where not much is getting done in our house. It's gray and cold outside, too gray and cold to go out for a walk or even really to run errands. The snow is, at last, mostly melted away, but everything outside looks dirty and sad. It's the kind of day that makes me want to curl up in the house with the curtains drawn and read a pile of books. Which is what, for the most part, we have done. But once I got tired of reading Ladybug Girl yet again, it seemed like a little distraction was in order.

A few months ago I fell in love with some bitty little gnomes that my neighbor bought to help teach her daughter the colors. They were just so freaking cute I had to take pictures of them for later inspiration. Not much more than felt and a wood peg, they would be very simple to make. But alas, we had no pegs in the house and as I've said, it just wasn't the kind of day to dash out to the craft store. So instead I made them pegless and stuffed with polyfill. I remember seeing something like them years ago, probably at a Waldorf store since they seem very Waldorf-y or Montessori-y. Super easy and quick enough that Evelyn sat and watched while I stitched the first one together, they are just about as cute as the originals.So far this afternoon they have been squashed into her pockets, danced around her doll house and are currently to be found having a conversation about frosting (who knows?) under the coffee table. There has also been a request for more, maybe we too will end up with a rainbow o'gnome


Cut a smallish triangle out of felt, You want something close to an equilateral triangle but it doesn't have to be perfect. Mine had a rounded bottom but flat would work too.







Starting at the top, whip stitch the triangle closed until you've come about 1/4 of the way down.









Tie off and start again about at the halfway point, a little higher, and stitch to the bottom, making big stitches along the bottom to help draw it closed.



Cut a rough square (mine was about 1 inch by 1 inch) of a different color felt and wad a ball of polyfill up about the same size as the square.







Draw the corners up and secure with a few stitches







Stuff the body with extra fabric or polyfill until you've almost reached the face slit, packing it down with a pencil as you go. Work the face in, it should be a little too big for the hole but that will help keep it in and, if you feel like it, add a few stitches to keep it there.


This was one of those make do with what you have type of projects. If I'd been a little more ambitious I probably would have hunted down some matching embroidery thread to sew with so that the stitches matched the fabric. But then I guess they would have been busy day gnomes or active day gnomes, and I was just a little too lazy for that today.

Listmonger, Listmaker, List-a-holic

That would be me. Confession time... I am an obsessive listmaker. I have lists of lists. Seriously. Ask Will. When we are getting going on something the first thing I want to do is make a list of what we need, when we are doing what, what each of us will be doing to get it done... I can't help myself. And funny as it is, it does help me. I have a terrible memory. If it's not written down I will forget it the moment I walk out the door. Or in the door. Or which ever way it is I'm heading.

One of the lists I've been working on lately is a master chore list. Not just things like "do the dishes" or "fold the laundry" (although yes, they are on there) but a real list of all the things that need doing during the year. Because like I said, if it's not written down, I won't get it done. As a result I forget when it was I've last washed the duvets, we forgot to clean the gutters entirely this fall and I will put off cleaning the basement until, well, until a massive rain hits and we wake up to find the whole thing ankle deep in water. I used to do the Flylady thing and while it was OK, it was a little too much. I can remember to clean my house every week. I'm actually kind of obsessive about things being tidy. I have this ever present conviction that at any moment someone might stop by and so the house should be guest ready at all times. Or at least close. But things like turning the mattress or winterizing the car, well, those things dont get done unless it's somewhere on one of my lists. And so now it is.

I spent Saturday afternoon brainstorming things that should be done once a year, twice a year, four times a year, every month, every two weeks and every week and then I split them up into my paper calender, making a little list for every week. (I just can't quite make that jump to all digital, I tried last year but as we now know, still forgot to clean the gutters, so back to paper I went) I know, obsessive. But it works for me.

Will requested a list of daily and weekly chores that he should be doing because, like me, if it's not there in front of him, it wont get done. So I also made a calender to hang on our heater vent/message center. That, actually, was kind of fun. I browsed through the print your own PDF calendars on Etsy but couldn't find exactly what I was looking for. Plus I wanted to add the list so I poked around with clip art and made these in Word. I'm sure something much better could be done in Pagemaker or Photoshop but since I dont have either on my computer (and I'm not very good at using them anyway) I went the simple route. So now we have all the school activities and all the major household annual chores and a list for Will all on one calender that actually fits in the space (it's too narrow for a regular calender anyway and yes that is a list of meals..) and I have my OCD list in my little pocket calendar. So here's to an organized year. I hope.

A Spot of Green (and Purple)

Remember in the Secret Garden when Mary says she wants "a bit of earth"? Ugg, I feel like that these days. Because of the way our house sits against a hill we get absolutely no winter sunlight so while the people across the street have only a few wisps of snow here and there in their yard, we still have a good foot or more covering every square inch of grass. A backhoe came by today and cleared the six foot wide burm in front of our curb. I'm not sure if the city is planning to dig up the street there or if they just felt sorry for us with our takes-ten-minutes-to-back-out parking space. I've got broccoli and cosmos sprouting in the mudroom and according to my Virginia Garden Book I should be putting leeks, beets, carrots and parsnips in March 1st. Yeah, right.

Whenever the snow does melt, or when I get fed up enough that I start digging it out so I can get at the soil, we'll be renting a the biggest rototiller we can handle and plowing a little mini field on the side of the house. But until then I'm feeling a little desperate for green so I opted for a terrarium.

Actually, I'm not sure it's technically a terrarium. I think they are supposed to be a closed environment. And probably succulents don't count. But since my outdoor gardening skills do not seem to transfer well indoors, succulents have become my new best friend when it comes to house plants. Last fall I made these tiny planters for an article I was writing and I have been stunned to see them thrive all winter long despite my infrequent waterings. In fact, they are probably flourishing because of my infrequent waterings, since they are succulents. Either way, they looked like they might want a bigger space than the bowl of an egg cup. And having had such great success with them at a small scale, I decided to take over the pedestal bowl that has been holding my pine cone collection all winter and inject a little green into the house.

Evelyn and I went to Fifth Season, a new store down the road that specializes in hydroponics and beer making which is sort of an odd combination, although water, and plants, I guess both beer and hydroponics are basically those two things so it kind of makes sense. We picked out a few more succulents to round out our itty bitty ones and some dried moss for the under layer and went home to get started.

The table looks a little more springish now, especially if you close the drapes so you can't see the heavy blanket of snow outside and we had enough plants to re-do the egg cup planter for the kitchen window with smaller specimens so Will is still happy. I hadn't realized how attached he was to our little mini garden until I changed them out and he wondered aloud what had happened to "his" plant. Apparently flicking some water on it has been part of his morning routine for the last four months. Which may explain how they've done well in spite of my black-indoor thumb....

Cake Balls, Who Knew?

Well somehow I missed it but it seems that Cake Balls are the new No-Knead-Bread. Sweeping the blogosphere like a snowstorm. Will's mom sent us some for Valentines Day and although I'm pretty sure she mentioned them to me at some point in the last few months, I somehow did not register how freaking yummy they are. No really. Make these. You will love me. And hate me because you'll eat them all.

Yesterday was Briton's Half-Birthday and just to mix things up I decided to make cake balls instead of my usual half cake. Ok, I'll be honest. I just really wanted to make cake balls because we had eaten all our Valentines Day ones and I wanted more. But I was amazed to find how popular they are when I looked them up online. Most, actually all, that I saw called for a box cake mix and canned frosting. I didn't have what I needed to make homemade frosting but I have a hard time passing up a chance to make a cake from scratch. So many recipes, so few excuses to cook them... I based the cake recipe on one from Nigella Lawson's How to Eat but switched out the powdered and melted chocolate and Evaporated milk for Sweetened Condensed milk in the hopes of getting a carmely type of flavor. I literally mixed it up in two minutes and put it in the oven on a delay cook while Evelyn and I dashed to the school for a Chinese New Year Lunch that I had totally forgotten about. But it came out yummy and not too sugary which is good because the frosting makes it plenty sweet. Trust me, find an excuse and make these, even with a boxed mix (Red Velvet is the most popular choice I noticed). Also, I made the whole cake recipe but froze one of the cakes, so frosting and chocolate wise I only used half. Mmmm, more for later...

On top of the cake you'll need 1 tub of frosting and 12 ounces of baking chocolate

For the Cake

1 3/4 C flour
2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1 cup sugar
1 stick melted butter (yikes! I know!)
3/4 of a can of Sweetened Condensed Milk (that's what I had, I think a whole can would be even yummier though)
2 beaten eggs
1 T vanilla



Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a double boiler melt butter then off the heat add in the SC milk, vanilla and then eggs, mixing thoroughly. Add the wet to the dry and stir until just combined. Pour into 2 lightly greased 8 inch round pans and drizzle the top with any leftover SC milk left in the can. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.


Allow the cake to cool completely before crumbling it into a large bowl. It occurred to me that this would be a great way to use up stale or leftover cake. Especially if it was already frosted. Just add a but more as you crumble and your set. But with a new cake, once it's crumbled, add the tub of frosting (any flavor would be good, I used cream cheese) and mix until you have a sticky, almost paste-like substance. Roll into 1 1/2 inch diameter balls and set on a plate in the fridge to chill for a few minutes.

In the meantime, melt the chocolate in a double boiler. When it's ready, drop one ball at a time into the chocolate and roll it around until it is covered. Lift out with a fork, letting the excess chocolate drip off, and set on parchment or freezer paper. Allow the chocolate to harden and then drizzle any chocolate left across the tops (I had to add some milk to it to stretch it a little, actually, I stupidly added cold milk which caused the chocolate to seize so then I had to add some hot water to fix that, and then I had enough to drizzle. So add a little warm milk if you want it thinner.)