It's dessert time!

Coming up: couple of dessert photos. I haven't baked at home for a long time. This year I didn't even manage a birthday cake for Hubby. I had already planned to make a Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte but somehow that just never came true. At work we are giving some though for the new coffebreak selection. That made me want to bake brownies. Yesterday I cleaned the whole kitchen here at home and "found" again the mint I dried last summer so I though: Brownies, mint...lets start with that and see what comes out of it :)

The next two pictures are from today. For once we were having a fantastic sunny weather with a beautiful blue sky. Happy, happy, happy!!! I have sore throat so instead of going for a jog what better way to spend my day than making one very "healty" dessert for us ;D

A bird sitting in the bush next to our new bird feeding house

For some reason the birds don't like to go in but the do eat the seed I through around on the ground.

So I was planning my dessert while I was cleaning and ended up with this: Fudge Brownie, Mint pearls, Raspberry coulis, Crème Chantilly and salt-chilli-pecan caramel. As a recipe for the brownies I used one from the Professional Chef of Culinary Academy of America with a small change. We used that recipe at school as well and I have to say that the Americans know how to make brownies ;) Here it comes:

Fudge Brownie

227 g dark chocolate (I used 72% one)

340 g butter

280 g eggs

500 g sugar

vanilla seeds

227 g wheat flour

170 g nuts (used pecans and wallnuts)

1. Melt the chocolate and butter in a water bath and let cool down to room temperature.

2. Cut the nuts coarsely.

3.  Beat the eggs, vanilla seeds and sugar into thick foam.

4. Add the egg foam to the butter chocolate mixture.

5. Carefully fold in the shifted flour.

6. Add the nuts

7. Pour the dough into a baking sheet which has been lined with baking paper.

8. Bake at 180 C for about 30 minutes.

The forgotten mint

Things needed for the mint pearls or caviar as some call it.

Mint pearls which are basically sweetened mint tea.

 And here comes the result. Doesn't look bad at all, does it?

The first presentation

The second try.

 Here is the recipe for the caramel:

Pecan caramel

130 g fine grinded sugar

30 g wheat flour

45 g fever-tree lemon tonic (actually orange juice but I didn't have any ;))

60 g melted butter

50 g finely chopped pecans

Just mix everything together and spread on the baking sheet. Sprinke with dried chili flakes and coarse sea salt. Bake at 200 C for about 5 min. After taking it out of the oven you can easily shape and cut the caramel in different forms when it's still warm. Or you can do like I did: let it cool down and just break it to different size pieces.

While I was baking the "boss" was taking it easy.