Can I Call in a Substitute?

Well hello, loyal readers! There has been a delay in baking activity lately and I would love to say that it was because I was working hard academically but actually, it's because I went home for the weekend and watched a lot of movies instead. More on that in a bit. So, as I've been up since 5 am and didn't want to go to the store, I again picked a recipe that only used ingredients I have in my house. Or so I thought. Tonight's adventure is Mini Brownie Cups from the Bake Sale cookbook (the pictures really do heavily influence the decision) and it also includes a recipe for a Mocha Glaze. I've been wanting to do something besides cookies so I was leaning towards cupcakes. These aren't exactly cupcakes and are more like brownies in mini muffin cups but it'll do.

Lucky for me, the last time I went shopping for cooking tools, they had mini muffin pans on sale for like $2.99. Obviously I couldn't pass such a good deal up. So I have a mini muffin pan and I have mini muffin paper cups that my mommy got me and they have polka dots and stripes and they're cute. Looks like I'm all set! Oh wait. The first ingredient here is 1/4 cup "light corn oil spread". Hmm. I guess I didn't read the original recipe quite carefully enough when I decided that I had everything to make these. The reason I know I don't have light corn oil spread is because I don't know what that is. Google to the rescue! Sort of. And yes, I googled "What is light corn oil spread?" After actually going through several web pages, I found out that it's basically margarine. Which I don't have. I then spent like, 20 minutes searching online for a light corn oil spread substitute. I found one person on one web page that was like "whatever, just use butter". That didn't give me a lot of confidence so I pulled out the good ol' Joy of Cooking and looked in the "Know Your Ingredients" section. Didn't find anything so I flipped through about a hundred pages in the baking section of the cookbook. Nothing. So I gave up and substituted butter and if these taste like crap, that'll be why.

Since I'm making mini brownie cups, I finally got to use the small bowl of my mixer. I was pretty excited about that because I'm sick of cleaning the big bowl. If someone wants to offer to come over and clean all of my bowls after I bake, I'd happily accept. The first thing to do was "in a saucepan over low heat, melt corn oil spread". Hahaha. Well, I'm already substituting butter, so I'll just substitute a stove and a saucepan with a bowl and a microwave, k? Beautiful. So I melted half a stick of butter. I've been melting butter since I was old enough to make popcorn by myself so I'm an old pro at it. Next, I had to beat two egg whites and one egg. I actually really enjoy separating egg whites from the yolks. Some people need tools to accomplish this (yes, they do sell an egg separating tool that looks kinda like a spiral funnel) but I separate the old-fashioned way, passing the yolk from one half of the egg shell to the other until all the whites have separated out, just like my daddy taught me. I smoothly separated the eggs and beat until "foamy" as the recipe directed. Then I beat in some sugar and mixed in the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt.

Mixing in the flour and other dry stuff was kinda funny. When I started the mixer, a small cloud of powdery ingredients flew up out of the mixer. Yay! It wasn't too terrible though and then the problem was fully solved once the ingredients got a little blended. Then I mixed in the corn oil spread butter and voila! All done! Pretty easy recipe really. All that was left was to fill the muffin cups 2/3 full with the batter. The batter was a little thick and kinda sticky so it didn't like being transferred to the muffin cups. As a result, my hands were once again covered in chocolate (well, cocoa batter but still). Also, I'm a bad judge of volume so for me to decide where 2/3 full is in a mini muffin cup is completely absurd. I did the best I could though.

The supposed yield for this recipe was 24 mini brownie cups. I made 34. Whatever. During the baking time for the first batch, I mixed together the dry ingredients for the Mocha Glaze. Allow me to explain. As if mini brownies in polka dotted paper cups weren't cute enough, I am supposed to drizzle Mocha Glaze over these brownies in an adorable fashion. My intuition says that this will be more difficult than it looks. Regardless, I decided to wait to make the glaze until after all the brownies were baked to give them adequate time to cool. Fun fact: after the first batch of brownie cups were done, I had to transfer them to a wire rack to finish cooling (and to free up the pan for the 2nd batch) and I was almost really stupid. My hand was about 8/9 of the distance to the pan before I realized that I shouldn't stick my hand on a hot pan to remove hot brownie cups. I may be more tired than I thought. Possibly instead of just substitute ingredients I could've used a substitute baker. Regardless, after staring at the hot pan like an idiot for approximately a full minute and rejecting several absurd methods of removing the brownie cups, I decided on just using a fork to fish them out. It worked and I didn't burn myself. I have a pretty low bar for success tonight.

And now the glaze. Umm, WTF Mr. Mocha Glaze? Mocha glaze was a huge disappointment. All it is is cocoa, powdered sugar, hot water, instant coffee and vanilla. How hard could that be? And I swear I didn't screw this up. I triple checked the recipe. Anyway, the glaze turned out a lot thinner than I expected. Then I was supposed to "drizzle" the glaze decoratively on the mini brownie cups. In the picture it looks more like piped icing than the gloppy mess I ended up with. I wasn't really sure of the best drizzle method but I just used a spoon because it was so thin to begin with. I kid you not, the glaze ROLLED OFF the brownies. Rolled off. I don't even know what else to say about it. It was like raindrops rolling down a window pane and I was powerless to stop it. So, instead of the cute drizzle stripes I was planning, they're more like ugly drizzle splotches that just rolled to the edge and then soaked into the brownies. Hmm. I swear I didn't make a mistake in the recipe. What a mess. Blah. Here's what they look like in the end:

As far as taste goes, they're terrible. The brownies are extremely dense, the mocha glaze is bitter, and it's a lot of awful in one place. I'm really tempted to throw them all out. Maybe I'll bring them to school Thursday with a note that says "Eat At Your Own Risk" and then run and hide. Nightmare. Sorry folks, I guess this was the first dramatic baking fail.

Critical Reception:
The pinwheel icebox cookies were a hit. I thought they were only ok but people liked them. The colloquium speaker even deemed them "outstanding" which I think is an exaggeration (especially since he's Italian and is probably used to way better cookies) but it was a nice compliment either way. All 40 cookies were gone within an hour which was good for me because I didn't really want them. Yayness!

A Disney Moment:
This is the latest feature of my blog which is completely irrelevant to baking or statistics. In anticipation of my upcoming trip to Disney World ::cough (in May) cough:: I decided to watch all of the Disney animated features in order. Why, you ask? Because I felt like it. And there's no better reason than that. Now, I'm no movie critic but I'll share my insights into these films which will sometimes not extend beyond "I don't like this one and I don't feel I need to provide a reason". This past weekend I watched the first five Disney animated feature films with my sister (Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi) and I am stalled on the next six because I don't have them yet. This post has gotten somewhat long though (plus I'm depressed about the fail brownies) so I'll wait to talk about Snow White until next time. I'll leave you with this thought though: it is a beautifully nostalgic feeling to see the old Walt Disney Classics logo and the bright red FBI warning on the old VHS copies of classic Disney films.