Brownies with an orange twist

Can I just say: NOM NOM NOM. Okay. Now that's out of the way, I made some brownies.



These are my latest variation on the Best Cocoa Brownies from Smitten Kitchen. I followed the recipe mostly, but was forced to put this into variation territory when I ran out of cocoa powder part-way through. To make up for having less cocoa powder than required, I substituted some Orange Hot Chocolate powder I had - a few heaping tablespoons worth. (Whittard's, if anyone's interested). Since this has sugar in it already, I reduced the sugar I added separately. I also used less butter because I ran out of that as well - but not significantly less, maybe 10 g less? No noticeable effect.



Result: moist, dense brownies with a slight orange-y taste. Not overwhelming, but quite pleasant. In the future, I may try this with orange zest instead of orange hot-chocolate. I bet that would taste even better.

time for a hex update

Here's the latest crop of hexipuffs. I think I'm up to around 30 in total, but I haven't really been counting. Some time soon I'll try to get a picture of all of them so far.



I really love how the blue and gray ones striped. Puffs are perfect for self-striping yarn. All the ones in this batch are different sizes, though - this is partly because some of the yarn I have is closer to sport weight, and I haven't been making stitch-count or needle adjustments for that. In a way, I like the sport-weight puffs better since the gauge produces a firmer, less loose fabric.

bread FAIL

Yesterday I made soda bread.



Looks lovely, if I do say so myself. I was pretty excited about it, and took lots of pictures when I got it out of the oven.

Unfortunately, it turned out inedible. I'm not sure what happened, since I'm positive I followed the recipe to the letter - this one, from The Really Good Life. Or maybe that was my problem. What made it inedible was its incredible saltiness. I nearly always cut down on the amount of salt in recipes, but this time I didn't. Other people don't seem to have had a salt problem with this recipe, so maybe it's just me... Still, it was so salty that even my dude balked and spat out the piece he tasted. Disappointing! If I try this recipe again, needless to say I'll cut down salt to a mere pinch.



Still, it does look gorgeous, doesn't it. ;)

gray day, bright food

Butternut squash soup. No recipe, just put a load of stuff in a pot, cooked until soft, liquified with the hand blender. I put in too much cayenne pepper, but otherwise it was pretty tasty. Pretend there's a cute little sprig of parsley for garnish or something!