She ate reeeeeeeeeeeeed velvet...

Bobby Vinton, anyone? Bueller? Bueller? I'm so lame. Bobby Vinton actually sang about a woman who WORE BLUE velvet, but I promised to do a review of a recipe for Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies. I found this recipe, cut and pasted it to my "recipes to do" document, and that was that. I didn't get a link, but I can tell you that it came from FoodiesTV.com which has their own FB page. So at the end I will just post the recipe text for you.

Look at these pretties:

They look soooo good, how could I resist? I didn't! I had all the ingredients so I started immediately! One thing I did not have is a "brownie pan". Apparently this is a new-fangled thing sort of like a cupcake pan, but with little squares instead of cups. And I guess you can get paper liners for it too. I did find one of these pans at Target:

They're about $16 and I did think about it last time I saw it and then decided against it. There's a point where you have to just let it go. A pan with little square cavities because you can't be bothered to cut a regular pan of brownies into squares ... let it go and not spend money on another thing in your cabinet, especially one that only has one purpose. The instructions do say that I can use a cupcake pan, so that's what I'm going with.

I have to say that I do not know what this hype over "red velvet" desserts has come from. Red velvet cakes have been around for a long time. The red never came from food coloring, like you see now, but from a reaction between cocoa, buttermilk, and vinegar, which turns the chocolate red. It's where "Devil's Food" cake came from - it wasn't just chocolate, it was nearly red. Now Devil's Food is just a really chocolate-y cake. The red velvet desserts are somehow in-style now, and I supposed it's just visual appeal.

[btw - I don't know when I actually started writing this but it was quite a while ago...probably 3 weeks...so be patient!]

So I made the batter (which was nearly a disaster when I didn't add the chocolate - but I fixed it), added it to the cupcake liners, about 2/3 full, and moved on to the cream cheese mixture. The cream cheese mixture is quite thick, and when I put it on top of the batter in the cupcake tin, and tried to swirl it, I couldn't. It won't move. So, I just continued along because being cupcakes, I didn't think it was a big deal. I put it in the oven, set the timer for 20-25min, and go! 25 min = pretty much raw. 30 min= not much better... this went on and on for nearly an hour. I have checked my oven temp thinking that could be the problem, but it's not. I think you cannot make them as cupcakes. I had to cover them at one point to finish the cooking because the top was getting way too brown. We ended up with tasty, but very chewy (not in a good way) cupcakes.

Verdict: Would I make this again? Actually yes. But I would NOT even attempt a cupcake. I would make this in probably a 9x13" pan (which for brownies I always line my pan with foil, and then spray or follow whatever pan prep instructions, so I can lift the brownies straight out of the pan and cut nicely, and not have to clean a pan). I also would not use the mix as prescribed for the cream cheese component - it's too thick - you can't swirl it, it's just blobs on top of the brownies. I looked up several recipes to see what is typical and almost every single one of them (including Martha's which is hands-down the best cream cheese brownies recipe), and they all call for half of the cream cheese, to approximately the same about of sugar, egg, and vanilla. I would definitely do that. Also watch the cook time - even in the bigger pan, I'm going to guess it's still longer. The batter is sort of "wet" compared to typical brownie batter.

Here's the original recipe with a note recommending correcting the cream cheese amount. Try it and let me know how it worked for you!

RED VELVET CHEESECAKE BROWNIES

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter
2-oz dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp red food coloring
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
8-oz cream cheese, room temperature NOTE: I RECOMMEND 4 OZ OF CREAM CHEESE
1/3 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F.
Line one brownie pan/cupcake tin with cupcake liners NOTE: CUPCAKE PAN DID NOT YIELD A GOOD RESULT - I RECOMMEND TRYING A 9x13" PAN
In small bowl, melt (microwave) butter and chocolate together in 30 second increments. Stir until combined and very smooth.

Set aside to cool for a few minutes.
In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, vanilla extract and red food coloring. Add chocolate mixture and stir until smooth. Add flour and salt and stir until just combined and no streaks of dry ingredients remain.

Pour batter into lined wells.

To prepare cheesecake mixture, beat cream cheese, sugar, egg and vanilla extract in a medium bowl until smooth. Distribute the cheesecake mixture over batter in the pan. Swirl in with a knife or spatula.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until brownies and cheesecake are set. A knife inserted into the cheesecake mixture should come out clean and the edges will be lightly browned. Let cool completely in pan. ENJOY!

John Legend vs Elayne: Mac and Cheese showdown

Hey y'all...
There are a few things in my "Karen's Book of Cookery" (should probably be "Kookery") that are obsessions for me, and one of those is mac n' cheese. Besides ye olde Blue Box Kraft dinner (btw - the Stop & Shop version is exactly the same and way cheaper. If your kids will only eat the blue box, then save some of those boxes, and pretend it came from there), my go-to benchmark is Elayne's - really simple and yummy, and even I don't need to write the recipe down, so you know it's easy. I'm not giving it away because it's a secret. Well, actually I don't know if it's a secret, but whatev's. But in my search to best it (which is frankly, impossible), I must test other recipes. Some are very good, but different, for example, the BLT Mac n Cheese by Cooking with Sugar made with what, you say - yeah Velveeta.

"Sugar" developed it for Betty Crocker but the link is to the original (you can also find on the Betty Crocker website). My kids are crazy about it, Connor will even eat the spinach happily, but they also know this isn't a mac n cheese that Mommy is going to make very often because our arteries will cease to function.

Then along came Martha. Martha has many mac and cheese recipes, and this new-er one popped up on Facebook - John Legend's Macaroni and Cheese, and looked very very tasty:

So I put it in my "to-do" pile of recipes. Now, I had no clue until very recently who John Legend was, and I know now that he's a musician and singer and that's great, but why he's hanging out with Martha is beyond me. How totally random. But when Martha's involved, I'm in!

I really only needed one ingredient, the Monterey Jack cheese; I had everything else in my inventory. I always keep at least 6 lbs of unsalted butter in the freezer, I always have elbow macaroni because you can use it for just about any quick dinner/lunch thing you want to whip up, cans of evaporated and condensed milks, and shredded cheeses that I buy in the biggest quantity and dole out what I want, and put the rest back into the freezer. Maybe one day we'll talk about my pantry and freezer! Won't that be fun?! The recipe uses minimal pots and pans and what's most interesting is that it does not entail the creation of a cheese sauce. Instead, you boil the pasta, and in a separate bowl you mix up all the liquid ingredients, and then in another bowl, blend your cheeses together. Then instead of mixing everything up before you put it in a baking pan, this was layers like a lasagna - pasta, cheese, pasta, cheese, and end with pouring the liquid all over the whole thing and bake! Well, ok then. And bake you shall.

[Oh my God - I just went to grab a little snack while I'm typing this, and there's a Doritos bag in the cabinet that's folded up, and clipped shut, that has what in it? Crumbs. What the hell?!]

So the concoction comes out of the oven and looks very much like the pretty picture. And it's also underwhelming. It's just not cheesy; it's a very dry mac an cheese, like all the liquid absorbed into the pasta (and trust me my pasta was not undercooked, which could lead to that happening), leaving just sort of pasta with melted cheese in. That also leads to the whole thing quickly becoming a hard glob of cheese with some macaroni welded to it as it cools. Here's the defining moment - the kids didn't like it. That's right, you heard me - the kids did not like a simple mac and cheese. The leftovers were dreadful too, since it became very solid and drier, and I just pretty much forced them on Bruce to take to work for lunch.

Elayne's is simple - has a grand total of 5 ingredients - an American cheese sauce, mix with your macaroni, kablam! Deelish classic mac n cheese. (I add a pinch of cayenne for fun.)

So what do I say about John Legend? Keep your day job. It's not worth repeating the recipe... on to the next mac and cheese challenge, if there is ever a worthy opponent.