Golden moment # 26 Buttermilk Brownies

This is Vivian Cobb. She was a pastry chef at the Hacienda Del Sol Ranch Resort, in Tuscon, Arizona. The image you see above is a scan of the dedication page of her very own cook book.

This is Vivian's great great grandson, licking the spoon as his mommy prepares a batch of Vivian's amazing buttermilk brownies, from Grandma Vivian's little treasure of a cookbook. 

And this golden moment is about to make an entrance in your own home, as you embark upon the incredibly rewarding journey of making the most light, fluffy, flavorful and delicious brownies you have ever tasted, IN YOUR LIFE, because I am about to do what all great pastry chefs love to do....share. Unfortunately, I can not invite you over to my house to join me as I whip up a batch of these heavenly brownies, so I will just have to share the recipe instead. You'll want to print this one out, just saying....All I ask is that you remember to note, this came from the kitchen of Vivian Cobb. (A resort kitchen at that, doesn't that make it even more delicious?)

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups flour (Take one tablespoon away per cup)

2 cups sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup of butter

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 cup water

1/2 cup buttermilk

2 eggs

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. vanilla

First step is to pull out your double boiler, if you don't have one just find two deep pans that are able to nest on top of each other, that's what I do. On the bottom pan pour 1 cup of water and add one stick (1/2 cup) of butter. On top boiler add the other stick of butter (1/2 cup) and 1/4 cup cocoa powder. Allow bottom mixture to boil, and top pan to melt butter completely before mixing in the cocoa powder.

While your double boiler is doing it's job, start mixing your dry bowl. Add your 2 cups of flour, minus the two tablespoons, 2 cups of sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon baking soda. There's no need to sift these ingredients.

Now start on your wet bowl, add 1/2 cup buttermilk, 2 eggs, and 1 teaspoon vanilla, mix well.

By now your double boiler mixtures should be ready, pour the top pan mixture of butter and cocoa into your wet bowl mixture and mix well. Then slowly add the dry flour mixture to the wet bowl mixing well.

Lastly, carefully add the boiling water and butter from your bottom double boiler to the mixture and mix carefully! 

The consistency of your batter will be very runny, this is just fine, you want it like that.

Pour mixture into greased baking dish and bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes. Be careful not to under-bake these brownies or they will be dense. Icing with warm fudge frosting while brownies are still hot.

When your brownies are done a fork will slide out of the center clean, and the edges will pull just slightly from the walls of your dish. While the brownies are baking, get started on your yummy warm fudge frosting!

WARM FUDGE FROSTING:

Ingredients:

1 cup butter

1/4 cup cocoa

1/3 cup buttermilk

4-5 cups powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

dash of salt

Once again, I use a double boiler set up for my frosting, pour water in your bottom pan, this time it's just for the steam. Melt the butter on your top boiler completely and then add 1/4 cup cocoa and 1/3 cup buttermilk. Add your powdered sugar one half cup at a time until you reach your desired consistency. If your frosting needs smoothing out just add a bit of buttermilk to smooth it out.

Good luck and enjoy this recipe, it is very near and dear to our family's heart, I hope your family enjoys these brownies as much as we do!

-Domestic Diva

Golden moment #18 Home-made Mayonnaise.

People, I made mayonnaise, MAYONNAISE!

But there's a back story, a motivation if you will...You see, I like good, whole organic food-but if that food is processed anywhere but your kitchen, good taste can get pricey, even for mayonnaise. And I'm on a budget.

My brilliant husband and I have a savings plan. It's a beautiful plan, broken down month by month on a little chart for the next five years with an estimate of how much we can save each month. Along the way we have bench marks, every six months actually, so that we can adjust our savings course as needed so at the end of five years we have a nice chunk of money to live off of while Josh gets his MBA. (That's the plan at any rate) On that lovely chart, there is a little box for each month that I get to color in green if we save the estimated amount, and red if we miss the mark so we can make up for it the next month. But here's the part where hubby got smart, he told me that anything ABOVE our estimated amount, and any interest the money makes (We invest our savings) he will put toward a down payment on our first home. Ahhhhhh-he KNOWS how much I want to buy a house so this is a HUGE motivation to me. Anything above that big number at the end of five years is for the house baby!

Hence, the desire to do stuff like, make my own mayonnaise, since the organic brand I like best costs eight dollars a container, comes into full force. I mean really, I'm a home-maker, so when it comes right down to it, my ability to save more lies in the little stuff like grocery budgeting and personal spending, and I am determined, by golly, to get me a down payment. And I don't just make mayonnaise, oh no, I make my own deodorant, and face-wash too. I'm also very frugal when it comes to washing windows, there are ways beyond windex and paper towels you know....we'll talk later, for now, here's how I made my tasty good mayo. The success of my first try made me pretty happy, so it's going to be my golden moment today.

I didn't want to go shopping for more ingredients, so I just used what I had and watched a lot of You-Tube videos, then I sort of winged it. Here's what I used.

1.5 cups olive oil

4 eggs (Washed at room temp)

Salt

Cottage cheese? What!?-Yeah, I know I'll explain later. It's good though, trust me.

Turmeric powder

First I washed my eggs really well. Home-made mayo has raw egg in it, and that's okay if you make sure your eggs are fresh and organic and you clean them really well before you use them. Then I separated the yolk and white.

I put two yolks in a bowl and then I blended them with my electric mixer for a few seconds, then I started adding my olive oil, slowly very very  SLOOOOOOLY, I mean, about a drop at a time slowly to make sure it emulsified it with the egg. Basically, our goal is to have a cup of oil suspended in the egg yolk. I did this for a while and then got way bored and impatient, so I dumped all the oil in at once. The emulsion broke (of course) and then my mayo looked like egg drop soup. See.

Not quite the look I was going for. Being of a determined sort of nature, and keeping in mind my back up plan would be to use this as a fantastic hair mask. (Seriously-I do that too, with pretty much exactly the same ingredients) I decided to try again. So I poured my broken mixture into my measuring cup, started with two new egg yolks and SLOOOOOWLY added the broken mixture to my egg yolks. It emulsified beautifully, but because I used all olive oil (It's what I had on hand) the density of the oil made the viscosity (I love that word) of my mayonnaise rather gelatinous.

At this point, I'm sort of thinking to myself.."Hmmmm, what now?" I could use this as a hair mask and I'd have really soft strong hair....or I could try and salvage this by smoothing it out somehow, what is smooth...I figured sour cream might do it, but I LOVE sour cream and if it didn't work I'd be sad to just have to use it on my hair, plus the flavor isn't really what I wanted. Neither was yogurt, especially since I only have vanilla yogurt. Then I figured cottage cheese might do the trick if I blended it up nice and smooth, so I did until it looked like this.

I had to add a bit of milk to the mixture to smooth it out, but it looked like it would do the trick. I folded it into my mayo mixture and then it looked like this....

The consistency wasn't quite as thick as I would have liked it, but my imagination started turning, this would make fabulous dressing, or base for a cream sauce over chicken and veggies, or Alfredo! It would make tasty chicken salad, maybe even tuna...I tasted it, and it wasn't bad, a bit heavy on the olive oil flavor so I added some salt and turmeric to enhance the flavor a bit. Came out tasting very nice! Next time I make it though, I will buy a lighter oil, like grape-seed or safflower. I think both the flavor and viscosity will be even better with a lighter oil.

And that was my adventure in cooking. And I saved $8.00! Yay! That's gold to me!

What are your money saving tips in the kitchen?

-DD

A green drink your toddler will love...

One of my passions as a domestic diva is health and nutrition, while I'm not always perfect at it I do my very best to keep good food in the house. However, sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed. There is SO much information out there about what to eat, what not to eat and why or why not to eat it that something as simple as a snack becomes a whirlwind of confusion. When my friends call me and tell me they want to change their lifestyle habits I always give the same advice "start with ONE thing."  Every little health tidbit I feel inspired to write about in this blog is going to be small, the type of change that can be your ONE thing. It is more important to take ONE small step in the right direction than to keep traveling down the wrong path because it is familiar. Today, I'm going to give you a simple recipe for a green drink you and your family will love. It is my go to pick me up drink when I need energy, a quick tummy filler, or when I want to feel like I'm doing something beneficial for my family's health. This is how to make a DELICIOUS green drink.




You will need:
Two or three leaves of organic kale
One ripe organic banana
Organic apple juice
3-4 ice-cubes
And a blender

First rinse your kale well  and then take the leafy parts off the stem and put them in the blender. Pour enough apple juice in your blender to cover the Kale leaves and blend until smooth. (This may take a little while depending on the type of blender you have). After the green is pretty blended add your banana and ice then blend again. You have just made yourself a delicious and nutritious green drink! While you're sipping on this amazingly tasty concoction you can read over this list of all the good things cruciferous vegetables do for your body and feel REALLY good about yourself. (Kale is a cruciferous vegetable, if you didn't know that it's okay I didn't either until just recently)


Cruciferous vegetables have;
lots of vitamin C
and Vitamin A,
 folate,
calcium,
 iron,
fiber and
phytochemicals - which
scientists are finding help
prevent several kinds of
cancer.
ALSO!
You just drank yours raw, which has the added benefit of being alkalizing to your body, and all of the nutrients and enzymes naturally occurring in the plant are maintained since they weren't heated. Also, because you blended it up, your body doesn't have to work as hard to digest the nutrients and they will be absorbed by your body much faster than if you'd had to chew it in a salad. Blend one of these up for breakfast, for a snack, for your hubby, for you kiddos and most importantly FOR YOU!

                                                                   Scotty says "YUM!"
                                                                  Here's to your health!
                                                                             DD