The verdict is in

Fact: your baked goods are only as good as other people tell you they are.

Pretzel crack was deemed by the office better than regular crack.

Crazy bitch pie (wow that sounds dirty) was enjoyed by all who consumed.  I personally felt it slightly lacking, maybe in spice, maybe the chocolate combo I used was weird...I'll be working on that one.

Crazy-Bitch-Get-Out-Of-My-House Pie

As you may have gathered, I've been having some problems at home of late.  These center largely around a crazy person being brought into my home against my will.  As therapy for this, a good friend had suggested I bake something for the occasion, a la Waitress, and behold, Crazy Bitch Get Out Of My House Pie was born.  It is apt for getting crazy bitches out of one's house, as it is loud and annoying (uses the blender), includes things this particular crazy bitch hates (calories, also fun) and includes alcohol in case the crazy bitch won't leave and you need to feel better.

Saltine crust
-1 sleeve saltines, crushed (you can do this by hand in the wrapper, because you have to take your rage out on something, and I recommend poor, defenseless crackers as opposed to, you know, people)
-Approx. 6T butter, melted
-1t water
Mix these things in your pie plate.  Press into crust shape.  Bake at 350 for 5 minutes.

Make the crust ahead of time and let it cool before you do the filling.  Or don't, if you're impatient, like I am.

Spicy Chocolate Filling of Rage

2 1/4 c. chocolate chips

1/3 c. sugar

3 eggs

3/4 c. milk, hot

2 T Kahlua

2 T chocolate liquor

1/3 c. Jacque Torres Wicked hot chocolate mix (because I had it on hand; you could use any spicy chocolate bar, or just throw in extra chips)

dash cinnamon, cayenne, chipotle chili powder (or whatever spices you like and have available)

Put chips, sugar, and eggs in blender and mix.

Add the hot milk, booze, hot chocolate mix, and spices.  Mix more.

Pour into pie crust.  Chill until firm.

Hope and pray that by the time the pie is ready the crazy bitch has left your home.

Crack, take 2

There is a land called Passive Aggressiva, and I am their queen.  Actually, based on some other people I know, I am at best the princess of Passive Aggressiva, but I digress.  I've been having some issues at home lately, so rather than trying to work them out like an adult, I instead chose to make the loudest recipe possible.  I decided to make crack again.  And you're thinking, how is laying out Saltines and caramel loud?  It's not.  This is true.  You know what is loud?  Grinding pretzels in the food processor because you've decided to do a pretzel crust instead of saltines as the base.  And then when that doesn't work, crushing them using a tin can, because you don't have a rolling pin, because after a year and a half of being broken up your ex suddenly decided he wanted his rolling pin back, and you didn't call him out on that being BS, and instead just bitched about it in your blog. (See?  I will rule Passive Aggressiva some day.)
And so now you're like, okay, they sound annoying, but how did it all taste?  Jury's still out on that - the crust didn't come out like I wanted due to my inability to properly crush pretzels; I accidentally forgot half the butter in the caramel so it still tasted great but didn't quite cover the entire crust, resulting in me having to mix the caramel and pretzels into one layer, and then I threw more chocolate chips on top than I probably should have because they were needed to hold the whole thing together.  I still have high hopes for the pretzels as a saltine substitute, I just need to work out the details.

My inadequately crushed pretzels.  I need to buy a new rolling pin.

My inadequate food processor.

The "crust".  In theory I like the idea of the pretzel chunks, but it makes the whole thing not stay together very well.

Baking the crust/caramel mixture.

I did half just chocolate chips, half chocolate and peanut butter chips.

The chips don't spread as easily on the uneven crust.

Chocolate peanut butter pretzel crack.

Chocolate pretzel crack.

 

Quintuple Chocolate Cookies

I have what might be called an unreasonable addiction to Food Network.  Apparently there are people out there who think it's silly to watch TV about food rather than just eating food; I disagree.  Whatever.
My current favorites are The Best Thing I Ever Ate and Cupcake Wars (more on that one later).  I watch both while I'm on the treadmill because apparently I'm a masochist.  While watching on Valentine's day, they were doing a Best Thing I Ever Ate episode about chocolate, which featured the dark chocolate chocolate chip cookies from the Levain Bakery in NYC.  The good news is I've had these cookies, so I didn't get as envious as usual.  The bad news is I've only had them once and was sick at the time, so I didn't really get to fully appreciate them.
So, when I stumbled across this recipe and had a party I needed to bring something to, Levain copycat cookies it was.  They went over great with pretty much everyone I fed them to - I got asked at the party if the cookies were professionally made.

These are actually crazy easy and fast to make, particularly because they don't call for softened butter.  Just cut it up and throw it in the mixer.

I'm usually not a stickler for ingredient quality, but I used Ghiradelli cocoa in this, and I really liked the way it came out.  Using a really good, dark cocoa makes the batter a really rich, dark chocolate, which you want for these cookies.

The recipe called for making 9 cookies; I ended up with 14 and they were still huge.

I think these speak for themselves.  

I was asked at one point what they were, and responded "double chocolate cookies." 

 "Really?  Only one kind of chocolate?"

"Well, I guess technically there are five kinds of chocolate in there..."*

"So they're quintuple chocolate cookies."

Indeed they were.

*I used four different kinds of chocolate chips/chunks.  This is definitely not necessary, but I'd just bought a bunch of new things to try (see previous post) and also had half a bag of regular semisweet chocolate chips that needed to be used up.

WTF, Whole Foods?

Ingredient quality is something I've never quite figured out about baking.  Back in the day, we were a strictly Hershey's Cocoa/Toll House chips family.  Then again, back in the day, I'm pretty sure there weren't all these crazy baking options, Martha Stewart wasn't a thing yet, etc.
Right when I graduated college I went through a generics phase.  My sister practically had a heart attack when she saw my kitchen and its Kroger brand cocoa.  Whatever, I was cheap, it still tasted good.
I converted to Ghiradelli for my chocolate chip needs about a year ago.  I used to love eating regular old semisweet chocolate chips out of the bag, and now they just don't taste that good to me anymore.  For generic chocolate chip cookies, my go to is the Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate chip.  SO much better.
Sometimes, though, a girl wants to branch out.  I've been wanting to make those Levain bakery style cookies for awhile, and I felt these required a more quality chip.  The regular grocery store doesn't have anything, so I ventured to Whole Foods.  I knew this would be expensive, but holy crap.
The recipe I'd been looking at recommended Scharffen Berger chunks, so of course they didn't have these.  After spending five minutes panicking over horrifying prices, I remembered that you only live once, and thus decided to suck it up.  I purchased the following:

• Guittard Bittersweet Chocolate disks
• Dagoba choolate drops
• a Scharffen Berger bittersweet chocolate bar

In total this cost me something absurd like $20.  All, of course, were excellent.  I think my favorite was the Guittard.  It's a pretty big disk if you're doing chocolate chip cookies, but I'm personally a fan of that, and the taste was fantastic.

Overall this was absurd and I need to find somewhere to start buying nice chocolate in bulk.  Costco only ever has Toll House which I did buy last weekend, but I can only use that for 'less nice' stuff.  I'm starting to understand how bakeries charge absurd amounts for a brownie.

Crack.

Everyone knows Cheez Its have crack in them.  It's why they're so delicious.  So I figured if crack was delicious in cheezits, it must be delicious in other food.  So when I stumbled across a recipe for crack, I felt compelled to make it.  Plus I had a huge box of Saltines laying around and this seemed a good way to use them.
It was not a good way to use them.  It was a GREAT way to use them.  One of the guys in the office is still stopping by hoping to find more, even though the stuff was gone by lunchtime the on Monday.
The other great thing about this recipe?  SO EASY.  Put saltines on a baking sheet, dump caramel on top, bake, throw chocolate chips on, done.  Also caramel scares me because I have an extreme tendency to burn it (the scorched pans in my kitchen will testify to this), but this particular caramel is super easy and so far impossible to screw up.

Yum.

Caramel.  Not being burnt.  Goes much better when it's butter + brown sugar, not this whole sugar and water business.  Also more delicious.  Somewhat less good for you.

I'm not entirely sure why the caramel has to be baked onto the crackers but I won't question it.

Chocolate chips, melting away.

YUM.  Waiting to be devoured.

Amazing Brownies

So I made these on Tuesday to bring to work and win the loyalty of my technicians.  Alas, there are no pictures of them being made because I was
a) exhausted from getting up at 4:30am
b) in an intense rage at my roommate and trying to get out of my apartment as quickly as possible.

Anyway, these were pretty easy to make and very delicious.  I threw in a cup of chocolate chips, because why not.  Also because thirteen hour days mean I need as much sugar as possible. They came out slightly underbaked because I was worried about overbaking, but once they sat overnight they firmed up enough to be slicable.  They went over extremely well with the guys at work, leaving me with only this sad brownie to take a picture of.