Chocolate

A Visual Guide to Making Alice Merdich’s Best Fudgy and Dense Brownies

/ Tracy Gromek / 4 Comments
RaisingFayeBestBrowniesThreeWays

Alice’s brownies made with three different unsweetened cocoa powders. From left to right: natural, dutch, and onyx.

This week my food obsession was with brownies. I’ve always had a hard time finding a truly great brownie recipe. Most are too cakey or dry–even the ones that promise dense chewy goodness–for my taste.

When looking up the best brownie recipe, Alice Merdich’s recipe always pops up. Here’s the kicker – I haven’t found directions on any site to be clear enough to create these great brownies on the first attempt. So, I did what I had to and baked up four different batches this week, making slight alterations with each new batch.

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Nutella French Toast Sandwiches

/ Tracy Gromek / 2 Comments

Nutella French Toast Sandwiches

For some reason I woke up thinking today was Saturday. My mind immediately went to brunch and French toast as I had been pondering French toast for the past few days. See, we never, ever have loaves of bread in our house. I’ve never been a big fan of bread, especially the ones that have any sort of decent shelf life, so I rarely pick up a loaf. But, when Marcus went to the store to grab some food before the blizzard he purchased not one, not two, but THREE various “loaves” of plastic wrapped pre-sliced “bread.” (He was all about an exceptionally large jar of Nutella that he found at the end of an aisle and wanted to play it safe.)

With this much fake bread lying around, you could most likely understand why I’ve been thinking about French toast. And, when you live in New York, you must do brunch on the weekends or I think they kick you out. So, it being (at least in my mind) Saturday, close to noon, and with three loaves of pre-sliced bread at my fingertips, I had at it.

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