A Newsy Letter About Swirled Brownies (3 Ways), Secretly Vegan Chocolate Pear Cake, And Easy-Peasy Honeycomb Candy
Hello hello hello! Hope you have had a lovely start to 2023. My start has been fairly uneventful – in a good way. I spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s making loads o’ pies – not because I love pie, though I do, but because I was working on a Thanksgiving pie story for Southern Living Magazine. It’s the second of three stories I am writing for them in 2023 – although now that I think of it, one of them might not even be pubbing until 2024 . . . Anyway, needless to say it was a busy week. Last week was a tad quieter, which is nice and not nice. I am one of those people who hates being so crazy busy she can’t see straight, but then also hates down time, which breeds anxiety, insecurity, and, well, boredom. I am also one of those people with loads of professional goals that I strive for 24/7, but when they are achieved, I am happy for the briefest of moments, before I am off to pursuing the next goal. Yes, you are right: there is a new year’s resolution brewing here and it has something to do with living in the moment and savoring one’s success, but I’m too busy to figure out what it might be (ha ha ha).
Anyway, on to recipes and my podcast! She’s My Cherry Pie, a baking podcast in which I interview iconic bakers and do a deep dive with them into their signature baked good, begins its new season Saturday January 21st! I will share the episodes as they drop with you all and hope you will consider listening and subscribing and all that fun stuff.
As for recipes, I worked on a fab Swirled Brownie story for the Washington Post in which I created 3 different swirls for an 8x8x2-inch pan of brownies: the peppermint white chocolate swirl, the tahini swirl and the cream cheese swirl. They are all delicious and I think you will love them all and learn a lot about swirling brownies along the way, but the brownie recipe itself is also excellent, if you are not feeling very swirl-y as of late.
Moreover, I also developed a secretly vegan chocolate olive oil skillet cake for Food52. I say the cake is “secretly” vegan, because I didn’t intend to make a vegan cake, I just happen to love chocolate “wacky” cakes, sometimes called depression era cakes, which are made without eggs or dairy or butter, and yet you would never know they were missing a single thing because they are so damn good.
Finally, my latest recipe for the Kitchn is for Honeycomb Candy. And if you have never made it before, you are in for a real treat. It’s a little scary because you need to cook the ingredients on the stove top, and when you add baking soda to said ingredients, you enter science experiment territory and there is a. lot of magic that happens all of the sudden, but it is fun magic and the resulting candy is so darn good. I promise.
Alrighty, I think that about covers it for this newsiest of letters. Until next time.