Special Brownies! And by 'Special,' I Mean Beans.

A few years ago, I met a slightly weird customer at my place of employment. She was a regular, so I saw her almost every day I worked. She was a middle-aged Chinese lady, and she liked to pawn off weird traditional foods on us on occasion. My theory was that she did it to butter us up so we wouldn't report her when we caught her kid not paying, but that's neither here nor there. Usually what she gave us was inedible crap, but one time she brought us something that looked like it had the potential to be appetizing. I was dating a Chinese dude at the time, so my super white-self had actually recognized the pale-white football-shaped blobs of dough: it was (probably) a pork bun.

She had given me two, one for each of the employees working that she liked. My coworker wasn't nearly as excited as I was; he didn't want to eat it because he claimed that it wasn't cooked. To appease him, I suggested that he throw them in the deep fryer for a couple minutes to give them a nice golden brown crust. Piqued, he obliged. By plopping those globs of bread and meaty filing into some hot oil, we made a lifestyle change. It was as if a light had been turned on in my trans fat-deficient life. Previously I had thought that maple syrup was the elixir of the Gods, but I was wrong. It's a hot vat of canola oil. It was now my mission to deep-fry anything and everything (and deep-fry everything we did, but that's a story for another time).

After taking a hot oil bath for two minutes, our buns were done. We laid our eyes on the bubbly brown coat the buns now donned, and braced ourselves for the delicious handful of pork we were about to consume. We were delighted by our new creation; I had improved upon something that was pretty good to begin with. This was a culinary masterpiece of the highest level: fusion food. East meets west. Pork bun meets deep fryer. We grabbed our finest plastic cutlery and placed the newly fried buns into our best paper basket and sat down before our feast.

"What's on the inside?"

"What is that?" "It's god damned beans."

Up until this point, I had just assumed this was a pork bun. I knew that steamed buns could have a myriad of fillings, and maybe I'm just an optimist, but I had assumed that the bun was half-full of pork. As much as I wanted to be able to answer to my coworker's question, I honestly couldn't.

I immediately felt a disturbance in my gut. I knew it wasn't the food, because I hadn't even eaten it yet. That was probably going to come later. No, this feeling was much worse. I was faced with the question that we've all had to ask ourselves at one point or another, "is this really pork?"

Since we weren't 100% sure what the content of the buns were, we were trepidatious about just diving in. When the bun handoff occurred, there was no mention of the type of filling. Possibly because the lady didn't really speak English, and none of us spoke Chinese. Also, we didn't ask. I quickly created a game plan in my mind. Instead of taking a bite and ending up with a mouthful of questionable meat, I would cut one in half and inspect the insides first.

So I did, and subsequently froze after taking a gander at the brownish purple sludge that was hidden inside. It was beans. Nothing but an awful clump of half-mushed beans. It was a disappointment, to say the least, but it wasn't entirely surprising either. After poking the glop of beans with my plastic knife a few times, I decided to not let our frying be for naught. I choked down one bite, but that was more than enough. I looked up from the hand of disappointment I had been dealt to see my coworker coating his half in a full packet of salt and taking a hearty bite. "They're not that bad."

A Love(handles) Story

As I jokingly tell people, I'm now on the wrong side of 25. I can no longer get away with deep-frying all of my meals, and I can't eat whatever I want without consequence. This is somewhat of a new revelation, however.

That awful discovery came when I was in Portland earlier this year. I was on vacation for a few days visiting a good friend of mine, having fun and being gluttonous. On the third day of my trip, we decided to take a break from sightseeing and berry picking to go shopping. With my XS clearance shirt selections in hand, I headed into the dressing room to disrobe. At the time, the only mirrors I had in my house were in the bathroom, fixed at shoulder height on the wall. Looking in the mirror after brushing my teeth every day, I thought my shoulders and neck looked pretty damn good. I had the shoulders and a neck of a gazelle, and I was invincible.

However, that feeling of body-positive confidence would soon be fleeting. Starting to try on the array of blouses, I took off my shirt and turned around to see a three-panel full-length mirror looming right behind me. At first I was flummoxed at how this funhouse mirror was showing me my reflection at 40. Instead of seeing my svelte-yet-curvaceous body, I saw a gelatinous white blob sullenly staring back at me. I had to stop and stare at what I had become; it was like the before picture in a Jenny Craig ad, shoulders slumped like a stick of butter half-melted in the Oregon sun. I vowed that when I got back home, I was going to look a little less like Beymax (and a little more like Beyonce?) and shed the holiday weight.

Return of the Beans: Chocolate Edition

This looks like stucco. Probably tastes similar.

Since January, the employees at my gym now actually recognize me instead of just my bank account, I can run for more than a mile without signing a death wish, and I've managed to drop seven pounds and counting. I've also signed up for my very first 5k, but that was only after finding out that participants get hot chocolate and fondue at the finish line (some things never really change).

Overall, my venture into better health and better nutrition has been mostly successful. I hardly ever eat anything deep-fried anymore, and the vast majority of my vegetables aren't sandwiched in between two hamburger buns. However, we all have our vices. Mine is anything baked, frosted, or frozen. I'm in the process of trying to wean myself off of sugar*, but it hasn't been easy. Or even successful, for that matter.

And that's where Pinterest comes in. A while ago, I stumbled upon a recipe that replaced all of the artery-clogging goodness of brownies with a can of black beans. At the time, I was disgusted, and if I'm being honest, I still am, but anything in the name of science. If it meant that I got to fill my gob with brownies and only an ounce or two or regret instead of a gallon, I'd try it.

Somehow it took a green tinge, even worse!

The recipe itself was extraordinarily simple. You basically throw a can of drained black beans, some brown sugar, cocoa powder and some other crap into a food processor and set it to annihilate. Pour it into a pan, shove it in the oven until all the demons have been exorcised, and voila, you have bean brownies.

I'd be lying to you if I told you it was a pretty process, for any of the senses. Every day I like to learn something new, and that day, I learned that canned black beans smell horrid. From the moment that the strong odor akin to cat food offended my olfactory receptors to the Pantone Baby Feces green the mixture turned whilst mixing, I was skeptical and regretful of my life choices. But there was no turning back. I had spent 99 cents on the can of beans, and I wasn't going to waste my hard-earned dollar. After mixing in all the cocoa powder, the once gray sludge had become a more familiar shade of brownie brown. Into the oven they went.

Conclusion: "They're Not That Bad."

Before trying one myself, I foisted one on my mom to test out. Her verdict was "can't tell the difference," but I didn't exactly trust the judgment of someone that subscribes to the Betty Crocker school of baking. Her palate for refined sugar isn't.. refined. So just like with the bean bun, I cautiously chiseled off a bite-sized chip from another square and forced it down my gullet. Surprisingly, she was mostly right. The texture was a bit too chewy, and it had an aftertaste that I just couldn't place, but the flavor of the unsweetened cocoa powder overpowered any of the nefarious ingredients.

I don't know what sorcery made these look edible.

Bottom line, would I choose these over regular brownies? No. But would I make these when I have a sugar craving and still want to retain a smidgeon of dignity and self-respect? No, no I wouldn't. Give me the real butter-laden thing, and I'll just run another two miles. Everything in moderation.

Since I'm such an awful person, I didn't want to be alone in my suffering, so I doled out the remaining brownies to my unsuspecting coworkers. That night, I sauntered in with my tinfoil-covered plate and urged, "who wants a brownie?" Because my coworkers are just as awful as I am, I fielded several questions of "are these special brownies?" Why yes. Yes, they are.

After indulging, nary a person told me "hey, these taste suspiciously like beans," so I'm now inclined to believe the reviews stating that you can't tell that these are chock-full of fiber. I'm not going to go as far as saying that you can't tell the difference, because that's just absurd. However, I did have several people tell me that they thoroughly enjoyed my choco-bean squares.

I should also mention that I haven't told any of my coworkers that they met, and possibly exceeded, their recommended servings of fiber the day they ate these. I professed that I'd do anything for science, but that's not entirely true. In reality, I'd do anything for entertainment. I get the feeling that they're no longer going to trust me when I bring in baked goods, but I only have one thing to say to that. Worth it.



*According to the DSM, sugar is not an addictive substance. Here is a good piece about food addiction and the farce of "detoxing" by one of my favorite fitness writers, James Fell.

Baking on Location: New Orleans

It's been five days. I graduated from San Francisco State University five days ago and I'm already bored out of my mind. I'm not surprised though, because I already knew that I'm the type of person that can never relax. Even when I go on vacation, I always have to be doing something. Take spring break, for example. I went to New Orleans to visit a good friend of mine. Before I left, I had asked her, "should I bring my piping tips?"

I'm going to back up a bit and explain what the past two years have been like for me. It's been a constant barrage of projects, videos, scripts, club meetings, essays, and everything in between. I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating: baking was my escape from school. Blogging was my way to connect the two. Now that I'm left without one of those (the larger of the two endeavors, I might add), I don't know what to do with myself. I guess the answer is clear: I need to bake more.

Now that I have what seems like an endless amount of free time (woo, being virtually unemployed!), I guess I should get to that backlog of blog posts I've been meaning to write for ages.

The Journey Begins

I never really learned how to color in the lines.

A few months ago, I spent a week in the most amazing city I have ever seen. I had never been to the south (or anywhere, really), but this California girl had heard a thing or two about southern hospitality. Since my dear friend was kind enough to let me stay in her guest room, I knew I couldn't arrive empty handed. You should know by now that I love me some cupcakes, but they aren't exactly the easiest to transport. If they slide around in my car whilst driving, they were going to be damn near impossible to transport via flying sky tube. So I had to think. What's relatively small, easy to put in a carry-on, and won't get confiscated by TSA? Cookies. But I couldn't just show up with circular cookies. How pedestrian. If I were going to bring cookies, they had to be good cookies. Louisiana-appropriate cookies. What's more Louisiana-appropriate than cookies that are shaped like Louisiana? Nothing.

Remember how I said that I was really busy with school? And remember how I said I went during spring break? And if you're ever been in college (or high school, even), you know how teachers like to assign a bunch of work before a break? Yeah, I was really down to the wire with these. I was frosting them Saturday morning. Four hours before my flight.

Since I don't have the eyes of Medusa (yet), staring at the cookies wasn't going to make the icing harden any faster. I just had to put them in a box and hope for the best. I grabbed an old Amazon box, lined it with wax paper, put down some cookies, another sheet of wax paper, more cookies, and so on. Here's where I should note that the picture up there was taken in my kitchen. Not my friend's kitchen. Unsurprisingly, on the long flight over, the icing had stuck to the wax paper then subsequently dried, causing it to turn into one giant cookie-wax-paper-hybrid lump. I guess the good news is that since it was wax paper, it peeled off easily. They weren't nearly as pretty as they were pre-flight (top left cookie notwithstanding), but they were still delicious. They made a great midnight snack, which was when my flight finally arrived (thanks Southwest and your awful delayed layover flights).

"Can You Make Lemon Bars? Oh, and Tiramisu Too?"

These look like cocoons of some sort. Gross.

A week before I had left, my friend was browsing through my Facebook page and stumbled upon the (somewhat unappetizing) photo of my lemon bars and tiramisu. She politely requested that I make both, since her favorite dessert is lemon bars, and her husband's is tiramisu. I'm just going to dive head first into the tiramisu (coincidentally, that's also how I choose to eat it, too) because I've made lemon bars five times in the past six months. That's four times more than I'd prefer, but baking helps pay the bills, so I can't complain too much. Because I've made them so many times, I was kind of over it and didn't take any photos. Just know that I love my friend, and since she had asked, I obliged.

A few days before I had left to go see her, she asked what ingredients I needed for making the lemon bars and tiramisu. I rattled off a list, but paused when I got to the lady fingers. I told her that the recipe called for two store-bought packages of the cookies, but that's not the way I operate. In the past, I had used store-bought, but I left it up to her to decide. She told me, without skipping a beat, "homemade." This is why we're friends.

T'was a Dark and Stormy Day

Well. The whipped cream looks good. 

I didn't get to make the tiramisu until half-way through my trip, mostly because it took so long to find all of the ingredients. I feel kind of bad, she sent her husband to three different stores to find mascarpone. I didn't think it would be such a rarity in New Orleans. If I recall correctly, he finally found it at Whole Foods. Just a heads up in case you're in NOLA and have a hankerin' for some Italian cheese.

Anyway, since the weather was so nice when I got there, I didn't want to spend any valuable sight-seeing time in the kitchen. It was gloomy one day, and the rain didn't seem to let up, so I used the time I was quarantined indoors to make the lady fingers. Let me just say, lady fingers are freaking finicky. They went from underdone to crispy in less than a second, then they teamed up with the wax paper to stage a revolt. Pulling the cookies off the paper was reminiscent of my childhood eating those awful Candy Dots. No matter how careful you are, you're going to be eating some paper.

I had made three different batches of cookies, and I started to get the hang of it after the first. I made way more fingers than I needed, so I had my pick of the litter for the tiramisu. At one point, my friend must have thought I was insane (not that she didn't before, she has known me for over twenty years), because I had started talking to the cookies. She could hear me coercing them, "turn over beautiful, show me your brown bottoms." Luckily I was able to find a good amount that weren't burnt to a crisp. The rejects were set aside and deemed "lady toes." Worry not, they weren't wasted. Her son inhaled them by themselves, so they mustn't've been too badly burnt.

Tiramisu, Assemble

"That really looks like fried chicken." "Well, it is the south."

Now it was assembly time. If mascarpone was difficult to find, I wasn't about to go on an espresso hunt. Strongly-brewed coffee would have to suffice. The only issue was that neither my friend nor I know how to operate a coffee pot (what is wrong with us?). After carefully studying the machine's many buttons for close to five minutes, we realized that her husband had left a nearly-full carafe of coffee in the machine. Apparently, in addition to being pretty inept, we're also both blind.

After the tiramisu had been carefully and lovingly layered together, I said that it was best to let the tiramisu set overnight. This would allow all the flavors to marry, and the rum and coffee to really soak into the lady fingers. I think we made it about four hours before we caved and cut into it. It did get better the next day, but it was still pretty good unmarried. Even her picky two-year-old son loved it. Adult tested, toddler-approved.

Overall, my trip to New Orleans was amazing and incredible in every way. I got to see a lot of rich history, eat a lot of great food, and spend a ton of money shopping. On my way back, Southwest overbooked, so I took a credit to take a later flight home. This means I'm definitely going back next spring. This also means that my friend has a little less than a year to decide what our next baking project is.

A Farewell to 2014-- Alternately Titled: The Post With the Worst Pictures

Preface: I kind of failed here. I started writing this a few days before New Years, but I got caught up with work, and before I knew it, it was a week into 2015. With that being said, I'm going to play a fun game I call "pretend it's still December." 

This year was kind of a mixed bag for me. I experienced a tremendous amount of good fortune: my first trip to the snow, a brand new car, my first solo plane ride with the destination of Portland to visit a good friend, a trip to Chicago with Kyle for Riot Fest, and everything else in between. However, there were some negatives as well: getting a mild concussion from faceplanting whilst snowboarding, ridiculous parking tickets and a door ding that chipped my paint, missing our flight back from Chicago, plus a few other speed bumps along the way. In the past few months, I've learned to not focus so closely on the negative, but rather to be thankful for the positives. Glass is half full and all that crap.

This year, I also tried to be more productive with my time. I wanted to focus my creativity and combine it with some of my other interests, so I got reacquainted with my love of baking and created this blog. I don't know if you noticed this, but it wasn't a very successful venture, seeing as this page has been up for eleven months and only has five posts, including this one. While my effort was questionable, my tenacity wasn't, so I figure it's only fitting to end the year with some more cupcakes.

I named these Rorschach.

Three Cheers for Sweet Pastries
The story behind these is kind of convoluted. In an effort to not pen another novel, I'm going to try to give you the Twitter version. I can't guarantee that I'm going to be successful, but I'm going to try, damn it.

Santiago wanted cupcakes. Didn’t know what kind. Coach suggested champagne, but not with predictable strawberries. Decided on blackberries.

That's the gist of it. I realize that barely makes any sense to anyone outside of my head, so I'm also going to include the CliffsNotes version for your reading pleasure.

My coworker Santiago was lamenting the fact that he never gets any of the extra cupcakes that I pawn off on people at work. You can't leave food unattended around my coworkers, so by the time he gets there, they're all gone. Because I'm such a nice person, I told him that I'd bake him something and asked what he wanted. With New Years approaching, I suggested something appropriately festive, like strawberries and champagne. Overhearing the last part of that conversation, hockey coach Simon chimed in with some helpful suggestions, such as champagne and blackberries. And oranges. And coconut. As usual, I had to rein in his ideas and I settled with just the blackberries and champagne. Blackberries in the cupcake, champagne in the frosting. This was a relatively simple combination, at least compared to my previous experiences baking with booze.

Taken seconds before someone inhaled it.

I Brought You My Cupcakes, You Brought Me Your Love
I brought the cupcakes to Santiago and Simon, and all twelve were gone within ten minutes (also the reason why my picture of the finished product is so terrible). I'm not saying that all twelve were eaten, however. One cupcake was given to my coworker Austin, who placed it somewhere safe so he could eat it before going home. A few hours later, on his way out, he grabbed his jacket and accidentally knocked over the cupcake right into the garbage can. Well, at least eleven were eaten and enjoyed.

It's a little disappointing to see something I lovingly created destroyed like that, but I guess the important part here is that Santiago was able to eat one and not accidentally fling it into the trash. Speaking of Santiago, in a funny turn of events, he now owes me baked goods.

That story takes place at the New Year's Eve party we were both attending. Contrary to what my baked goods tell you about me, I don't really drink, so when the clock struck 12, I was completely sober and enjoying the shenanigans that were unfolding in front of me. Everyone was three sheets to the wind by 12:30, but Santiago insisted that he was fine. I was wary, but he was so sure in his low level of intoxication that he bet me that he would be sober in thirty minutes. I usually never have any idea what to wager, but after the confectionary events from a few days prior, I told him that if he lost, he'd have to bake me something from scratch. To make it official, we shook on it, and when he kissed my hand, I knew I had it in the bag. I decided to spend that thirty minutes by having a little fun and administering a field sobriety test of sorts (I do have photos of this, but I'm going to save what little dignity is left and not post them here). No surprise, but when 1:00 am rolled around, he was still pretty inebriated. I can't wait to see what he makes for me.

I already know that 2015 is going to be an incredible year (it already has been, but more on that later). I have no doubt that I'll be faced with some challenges along the way, but if there's anything that I learned from this year it's that it won't be anything that I can't handle. Hopefully. As for resolutions, I don't really have any. Except to learn how to do a backflip and ride a bike.