A Book of Cookrye goes to abroad!: or, Some countries really will let anyone in

You know you've left home when there are different logos on the street litter.

That's right, we at A Book of Cookrye recently went en voyage! Guess what country we went to!

I must say, while the US puts the national flag on everything from guns to underwear, Canadians have outdone us by making an entire chain of gas stations out of theirs.

You just want to stand under the awning, slap your hand to your heart, and sing "O Canada."

Yes, we went to Canada, which is best known to US citizens as either A) that country you swear you're moving to after every election, B) that country with the free doctors, C) that country where everyone says "aboot" (for the record, no one in the entire country actually pronounces "about" like that and they will be very annoyed if you keep saying "aboot" at them), or D) that country where everyone is actually polite. With regards to that last one, it turns out that Canadians aren't really nicer than Americans; they tend to just be more passive-aggressive where Americans would drop the "passive" business. For example, even my rent-a-bike felt the need to take swipes at my relationship status.

It turns out that while it's easy to be broad-minded in theory, it's a lot harder to do so in practice. While we were of course aware that the rest of the world does not operate exactly like the US, we could not help being utterly surprised at some of the most innocent of things. For example, all the stoplights have massive safety-yellow collars. I've been informed this is to make the lights easier to see when the sun is directly behind them. This is a much nicer approach than that used in the US, which is to make drivers squint right into the blazing sun and hopefully not be too blinded to see whether the green bulb is lit.

Sun-shielded stoplights are not the only way Canadians have adapted their infrastructure to the weather. If you come from somewhere relatively warm, you may wonder why there are signs labeling each fire hydrant. After all, the fire department surely already knows where the hydrants are, and since they're over the curb and well removed from the road, any driver who hits one is surely responsible for their own automotive ineptitude. It turns out they have signs because their winter snow gets so deep, sometimes the only way the fire department can find the hydrant is a sign like this peeping out over the white dunes. With so much snow burying their country every year, it is no wonder Canadians make snow muffins.

If you're like me, you'd be delighted to see that road construction is marked off with Halloween-colored cones.

Engineers and scientists will all appreciate that the speed signs are all labeled with units. Also, they use kilometers instead of miles. I know that the sight of non-metric units make engineers and scientists get twitchy, so look upon this and feel better.

Also, apparently Canadians can be trusted to remember basic road signs without the need to label them as the US does.

The idea that people in Canada have more common sense per capita than their southern neighbors extends to things like high-voltage power lines. In the US, you would never see a pedestrian trail threaded between the towers.

Look at how clean this trail is! If you wanted to, you could go barefoot for miles without getting shards of beer bottles embedded in your feet! (Yes, I personally tested this as my shoes were getting on my nerves.) Furthermore, there is no moat of barbed wire at the base of each pole. Please note the fact that the trail runs right up to this tower, which has nothing but a sticker to keep climbers off:

Granted, there is a barbed wire ring around it about 10 feet up, but that doesn't deter children and daft adults from deciding the bottom of it looks like an enticing jungle gym. Apparently in Canada, one cannot sue the state for injuries incurred by one's own stupidity. Note that the sticker simply says to keep off of the tower. It doesn't say anything about, say, walking directly underneath it (assuming we stay on the ground).

It seems that no one in the power company would have objected had they seen us directly under it taking a picture like this.

I took this just because I legally can.

While it seems silly to take such a picture, the point is that unlike the US, no one in Canada would see us directly underneath a high-voltage transmission line and frantically chase us away (or threaten trespass charges) under the assumption that we would surely do something stupid, cause very expensive damages, and then sue the electric company for any injuries suffered in the process. In fact, the closest we saw to a barricaded line was this one, where the power company decided they'd rather cars bump into some concrete wedges than into the lines carrying electricity across the country.

French is on such equal footing with English in Ottawa that the waitstaff in many restaurants will greet customers with "Hello! Bonjour!" just to make sure the customers understand at least one of them. Coming from an area with no French speaking population, we had always though of French as one of the languages one learns to fulfill the foreign language requirement in high school. Sure, we knew that in many parts of the world French is spoken as much as English is in our little corner of the United States. But in our personal experience, French was a language of dreary academic-approved literature (as we all know, no one is ever allowed to read anything fun in high school) and sentence drills. We were honestly surprised to hear people ordering at restaurants, having random conversations, and scolding unruly children in French. There were even children babbling to each other in French! While one can obviously surmise that said children had learned French the same way I did English, it still astonished me to hear people clearly not old enough to have taken fourth-semester advanced French actually talking in it. We certainly never thought of French as a language used for such ordinary things as candy packaging at gas stations.

While we live in a part of the US with a heavily-Spanish speaking population, the Spanish subtitles on most things sold on the general market (as opposed to specific businesses aimed at the Spanish-speaking population) are rarely printed in the same size as the English.

Apparently French/English signage is limited to specific parts of southeastern Canada. However, that was where we happened to be. Also, (in case you forgot most of your geography classes) Ottawa is the national capital, so they really go out of their way to make sure you'll be at home regardless of which language you speak. You can barely find a job in Ottawa unless you speak both. Perhaps because the national capital draws a lot of American politicians who can barely find their way to their own offices without a GPS and three aides, in some places one finds that not only are the signs in two languages, but the numbers are too.

They may have gotten tired of Americans muttering that they didn't have time for them meter things and then ramming the beams with their raised-suspension SUVs.

When I say all of the road signs are in two languages, I do mean all of them. They even translated the suffixes on the streets. I thought it added a lovely symmetry to the street names.

 Even the most ordinary of signs will be in two languages.

I always associated the word "arrêt" with unusually prissy ballet teachers telling their students to put both feet back on the floor.

Incidentally, you should know that this stop sign is right outside of the Canadian Parliament building. We at A Book of Cookrye walked all the way from the street to the front steps and could peep in the front doors without encountering any barricades or being interrogated by any suspicious policemen who thought we were casing the joint. Indeed, were the tours not over for the day, we could have walked right in unimpeded.
But this is A Book of Cookrye, not A Book of Street Signage. Let's get to edible things!
If one goes to doughnut shops, one will find the selection is about the same as in America. However, some items get renamed in ever-so-genteel ways:

Tea biscuits! I love it! Also, it seems Canadians aren't as addicted to sugar as Americans are, for if you order "plain doughnut holes," you get this:

Literally a plain doughnut hole. I did not know these existed. If you order plain doughnut holes in the US, you will get glazed ones. This is partially because American doughnut shops have cheapened their formulas so much that without the glaze, you could tell how terrible the wads of fried dough are. But apparently enough Canadians can do without sugar that doughnut shops keep these on hand. They are not a special order item; there's a stack of them under the counter because apparently enough people order them to justify keeping them on hand. Also, because you're likely dying to know, it was faintly sweet, kind of like fried pound cake except not as dense.
But perhaps you're not in Canada to purchase doughnuts and the like. You may look at most restaurant prices and decide to cook for yourself. So, let us see what one finds in Canadian grocery stores! Going to the grocery store is an interesting way of seeing what people eat, and in more general terms, an interesting peep into the day-to-day lives of those who live where you are visiting. For example,you just never know what will be so popular the grocery store will have to ration it.

However, I regretfully must add that the gluten-free craze has apparently hopped over the border. While this is doubtlessly wonderful news for the handful of people with actual gluten problems, I'd kind of hoped the I-don't-know-what-a-gluten-is-but-the-morning-talk-show-said-it's-bad-for-you crowd would stay confined to the US. Maybe this is an unfortunate casualty of sharing the world's longest unprotected border.

While the produce section has the same selection as one would find on the other side of the national border, Canadians had the ingenious idea of putting handles on those bags you're supposed to put your vegetables in.

You can either tie it shut or carry it on your arm to free up your hand.

Speaking of produce, some of it actually comes from Canada! That's right, it's grown and sold in the same country.

It really is the little details that remind one that one is abroad- things like two-language signs, handles on bags, and phrasing that is just a little bit different. In the US, no grocery would ever make reference to the Mexican aisle. They'd use a word like Hispanic.

Also, the diabetes-and-caffeine aisle uses completely different names for everything. "Sport drinks" (read: energy drinks) sounds like an optimistic suggestion, in hopes that most people purchasing it were about to do something very athletic. "Juice crystals" suggests that the powder in the Kool-Aid packets is at least partially derived from fruit. And "alternative beverage" is a very vague term for the sodas you just know are terrible for you.

While vegetable shortening has all but replaced lard in the US, the baking aisle selection suggests Canadians aren't so squicky about the fact that lard comes from pigs. Not only does half the shelf space go to lard, they have store-brand lard.

You just never know what spices will be commonly used wherever you go. For example, while Americans so rarely use savory that only the foofier supermarkets stock it, apparently Canadians use savory a lot.

But perhaps you aren't interested in being able to buy literal bunches of savory. If your cooking inclines toward desserts, you will be very interested to know that while manufacturers shrank baking chocolate packages down to half their size in America, they still sell it in half-pound boxes in Canada.

The Canadian selection of artificial flavorings gets a lot more creative than the American one. Notice that while the actual vanilla extract is labeled simply "Vanilla," the fake stuff is classied up into French Vanilla.

 Also, while Canadians are better than Americans at recognizing basic roadsign symbols and at basic safety around power lines, apparently they need more disclaimers than Americans do on their food. Check out the warning on this recipe from the back of a chocolate chip bag:

Also, yes that brownie recipe looks amazing and will likely appear very soon.

"Appliances vary in power, these instructions are guidelines only."
Disclaimers like this are standard on microwave recipes here in the US. However, in Canada, they apparently just put them right under every recipe. Maybe they got inundated with complaints from cranky cooks with defective ovens.
Of course, whenever one is in a different country, the money will be different too. If you pay cash in Canada, odds are you must face Queen Elizabeth, who with her very gaze says "You don't need to buy that shit." My friends whom I was visiting thought it was creepy that US money has all those dead people on it, so you just never know what will be noteworthy to people not used to it.

Also, Canadian paper money is actually plastic and has little see-through parts.

Also, Canadians do not have pennies. While this doesn't cause any problems if you're paying an odd amount by card, it does make paying a bill of, say, $2.78 difficult if you're paying cash. If you're from the United States where pennies are still plentiful, you may wonder how Canadians cope. Check under the total on this receipt (and ignore the ungodly prices):

Truly, the Canadians have solved their problem of being literally penniless.
But you may not want to travel all the way out of your country just to end up back in the kitchen. Perhaps your (and your friends') budget allows you to avoid cooking and instead dine out. Even at the most ordinary-looking of restaurants, you will find things are subtly different. Check out the condiments available for one's French fries:

Yep, that is a bottle of vinegar given equal space with the mustard and ketchup. It's not even something fancy like wine vinegar or malt vinegar. It is the same stuff one dumps in the washer with unusually smelly clothes or uses to wipe down the countertops.
Despite thinking it must be utterly revolting, I allowed myself to be persuaded to try some of it on fries. And I hereby  report that if you like salt-and-vinegar chips, you will wonder where vinegar has been all your life. You will consider bringing a little bottle of vinegar with you the next time you get drive-thru.You will then lament that even in Canada, vinegar is only set out in steakhouses and not on every table in every restaurant that sells fries.
It's always interesting to see what foods have traveled from other countries. Seeing how dishes change as one goes farther and farther from their origin point is like an edible game of telephone. Since I haven't been outside of the United States in many years, I've never been on the receiving end of seeing foreigners mess with your food. While I know that (for example) most of our Chinese takeout bears little resemblance to what is served in China, and that a heap of spaghetti hidden under canned sauce and a thick pound of gooey, nearly-burnt-under-the-broiler cheese has only the thinnest connections to Italy, I've never had the chance to leave my country and see what it feels like when the culinary tables are turned. We at A Book of Cookrye are not authenticity snobs, but only care if the food is actually good. With that in mind, let's see what has crossed from the US into Canada!

Pulled pork, a staple and a religion throughout the American South, would never be put in the same advertisement with the word "panini," or worse, "wrap," in the Southwest which Tim Horton's claims this represents. But you have got to see my personal favorite:

Tragically, I cannot report whether the Mexican crêpes were any good because the restaurant only sold them weekdays. However, as someone who has lived in Texas for the past few years, my friends just had to take me to... uh... this place.

Nothing says Texas quite like walking right into a two-story mural that says WELCOME Y'ALL.

I don't know who decided Canada needed Texas-themed restaurants, but apparently they were right. There are two of them in downtown Ottawa alone, and both of them were crowded. And get a load of the dedication to the theme! There are a lot of restaurants just like this in Texas. It's where you take your out-of-state relatives who want a "Texas Experience."

Wagon wheel lights, log cabin ceilings, pictures of farms and John Wayne...

You may wonder just what a Texas restaurant in Canada would serve. The answer: Mostly barbecue and fajitas, with free chips and salsa while you wait for your order. However, nowhere in Texas have I ever encountered a special dish just for serving chips and salsa.

Note that they even ordered Texas-themed tablecloths.

While of course both of them can be found all over Texas, it was very strange seeing Mexican and barbecue coming out of the same kitchen. I'd never realized how separated the two of them are in Texas restaurants that are actually in Texas. Also, because we are in Canada, we have "Classic Poutine Texas-Style."

For the uninitiated, "Texas-style" in Canada means it has either barbecue sauce, jalapeños, or both. It turns out Canadians apparently put more effort into making their food tidy than any Texas restaurant would. In addition to the aforementioned designated chip-and-salsa dishes, they had special partitioned trays for the fajita condiments.

Furthermore, quesadillas came carefully arranged with an artistic line of sauce and delicately placed salad leaves. For the record, they really did taste like something one might get in a Mexican restaurant in Texas. (note: I didn't say they were anything like Mexican food, but that they're just like Mexican food sold in Texas.) But I've never seen them so carefully laid on a plate.

While it seems quesadillas made it all the way across America and over the border nearly unchanged, fajitas changed a lot in translation. We present: pulled pork fajitas!

It is exactly what it looks like. Pulled pork under a generous dipperful of barbecue sauce, served on a sizzling platter with onions and bell peppers. I was fascinated by the whole experience. I love to see what features of a dish remain the same as it makes its way across great distances. What do people think make any food definitively that specific food? For example, lasagna has made its way out of Italy and over the Atlantic, where the good people of the United States transformed it into things like chocolate lasagna and Mexican lasagna. Apparently by American definitions, it's a lasagna if it has thin layers of something bread-like (noodles, tortillas crushed Oreos, thin slices of chocolate cake), layers of some white stuff, possibly layers of meat, and layers of some other sauce. Likewise, it's fajitas in Canada if it involves meat and onions on a sizzling platter with tortillas on the side.
It seems Canada is a ready market for the American South, because we were later treated to a restaurant with menu items like this. Please read the second item:

I dare someone to attempt serving Texas Onion Rings (or Texas Anything, really) with an "Alabama Sauce" while in either state.
However, this being Canada in the fall, apples are in season. Apples grow so well there some places simply have them as ornamental shade trees. You don't realize they're supposed to be apple trees until you notice some wormy yet recognizable fruit in random hedges.

Once you cut away the bug-eaten parts, the rest was tart but very good.

This foreshadowed a lovely treat my friends had planned: Apple picking!
Just like Florida makes such a big deal out of their state's orange production (or at least, they did before they replaced all the orange trees with housing subdivisions), Canada is very proud of their apple production. Every year, many people make the pilgrimage to various apple orchards. After paying a small fee and donating blood to the local mosquito population, you can go out and gather all the apples you think you'll eat before they go bad on your countertop. You also get to see that outside the supermarket, many apples are misshapen or oddly sized. Some may look like someone's butt.

Other apples are the size of cherries.

We at A Book of Cookrye have to warn anyone who's never gone apple picking before about tasting the apples. Yes, there may be so many different kinds of apples in the same orchard they have to put signs on each row...

And yes, they will all look so good that you'll want to taste each different kind of apple, especially the ones you've never heard of before, and yes, they'll all be so delicious compared to what was in the supermarket just a few miles (sorry, kilometers) away, and yes, they'll all look so tempting you can't resist...

But if you're not careful, this will happen:

Shrub Monkeys by ktshy, full size here

We at A Book of Cookrye would like to thank those who graciously let us visit. Your hospitality, generosity, and benign bemusement as we photographed grocery stores, street signs, road stripes, and everything else is deeply appreciated. We would like to close by commending Canadian vandals for their commitment to legibility.

Molasses brownies: or, When experiments actually go right

We at A Book of Cookrye have been thinking about the world's oldest brownie recipe. It looked like a recipe for what would be like blondies with extra molasses. Since we at A Book of Cookrye really like both blondies and molasses, the idea of chewy, gooey molasses squares sounded amazing and perfect. However, they turned out to be like gingerbread.

Not to lie, this recipe makes really good gingerbread. We made it again, adding some shakes of various spices, and didn't tell anyone the recipe was originally supposed to be brownies. It was kind of like when we got these delicious soft cookies from a recipe that was supposed to make gingersnaps. As long as one don't tell anyone what they were supposed to be, people liked them a lot. But in the case of the brownie gingerbread, the recipe's failure to turn into what we'd call brownies (or blondies) was disappointing.
As lovely as the gingerbread was, we were hooked on the idea of really dark molasses brownies and tried to make them happen. We tried messing with various amounts of the things in the recipe to see if it would go from a dense cake to a brownie. We even looked through the nerdier cooking websites to see what it is about a brownie recipe that makes it turn out like chewy brownies and not like cake. Believe it or not, the question is little answered. A lot of people have made recipes for what looks like baked oil-paste and claimed that is the perfect brownie. We at A Book of Cookrye would argue that they're making a carrot-free, chocolate-flavored version of the many carrot cakes we have unfortunately made.
And so, we at A Book of Cookrye decided to drop the original recipe, start with our favorite brownie recipe, and just replace half the sugar with molasses. Either we'd get the lovely, fudgy molasses brownies we dreamed of, or we would get a nasty mess that would discreetly fall into the trash can.

Molasses Brownies 1 c butter (or margarine) 1 c sugar 1 c molasses 2 eggs 2 c flour Heat oven to 350°. Grease a 9x13 pan. For this recipe, even if you usually don't, seriously consider lining the pan with foil first. Melt the butter in a large bowl or in a saucepan. Stir in the sugar and molasses, mix well. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing in the each in thoroughly. Finally, stir in the flour just until mixed. This may be easier with a whisk than a spoon- you won't have to spend as much time breaking up any lumps. Pour into the pan. Bake 13-20 minutes. A knife, toothpick, spoon handle, or whatever you're using should come out of the center with no liquid batter on it. If little clumps of brownie cling to it but there's nothing runny on it, they're done even though it didn't come out clean.You may think they are under-done, but they will firm and set as they cool.

Even if these failed, at least they would fail while being wonderfully dark and full of molasses, just like we wanted.

As one might suspect when half the sugar is replaced with syrup, the batter got a lot runnier. We didn't have to spread it into the pan, we just dumped it in.

We had serious misgivings when we removed this from the oven. For one thing, even though it tested done when poked with various implements, it didn't seem baked. It was like a pan of molasses-flavored Silly Putty. It really seemed underdone when we tried to cut it. Besides, the top looked oddly cratered. We considered baking it longer, but then reasoned that putting it back in the oven would only harden it until it threatened to break one's teeth.

But miraculously, they got firmer as they cooled, which confirmed our suspicions that had we baked them hard they would have cooled into molasses rocks. Since we took them out of the oven early, we had delicious molasses squares!

Look at them! It's like molasses held together with a magical force-field. They are perfect. They're all I wanted this recipe to be.

Second-Stab Saturday: De-icing the Allegedly Best Brownies!

We at A Book of Cookrye couldn't help thinking about the brownie recipe that claimed to be better than any other we could possibly have. The brownie batter had been too delicious to possibly taste as disappointing as the brownies had been. The more we thought about it, the more it seemed the sugar overload the recipe said to ice them with had so successfully hidden the taste of everything in the brownies except the baking soda and salt. And so, we present a a very simple alteration to a recipe: leaving off the icing!

Look at how gooey and nearly-black with chocolate the brownies are! Who wouldn't want to make a recipe like this again?

Brownies ½ c sugar 2 tbsp butter 2 tbsp water 1⅓ c chocolate chips 2 eggs ⅔ c flour ¼ tsp baking soda ¼ tsp salt 1 tsp vanilla ¾ c nuts, if desired Heat oven to 325°. Grease an 8" square or 9" round pan. You can use a 9" square if you like them a little thin. Mix sugar, water, and butter in a saucepan, bring to a boil. Remove from heat. Immediately stir in the chocolate chips with a spoon. When only a few lumps of unmelted chocolate remain, it may be easier to use a whisk, but if you use a whisk at first you'll just get a big wad of chocolate chips in the middle of the wires that won't melt or break apart. Switch to a whisk and beat in the eggs until all is smooth. When thoroughly mixed, beat in the baking soda, salt, and vanilla. Lastly, add the flour, beating out any lumps. Stir in the nuts if you want them. Pour into the pan and bake 20-30 minutes, or until a knife or toothpick in the center comes out with no liquid batter on it. (They are perfect when there is still stuff that clings to whatever you're testing the pan with but nothing runny is in the center.) If they sink while cooling, don't worry about it. Recipe easily doubles for a 9x13 pan. Cooking with the Families of Saint Peter's Community, 1988 (contributor: Wana Halbach)

As a recipe note (because you owe it to yourself to try these), while it is easier to mix these and beat out any lumps of unmixed things with a whisk than a wooden spoon, you probably shouldn't use a whisk to try and beat the chocolate into the boiling syrupy stuff. This will happen.

Instead of melting into the pot of stuff, the chocolate chips formed a wad inside the whisk and would not come out no matter how hard I bashed it into the side of the pot. So yeah, use a spoon to get the chips melted (or at least mostly so), and then get out a whisk.
As noted the last time we made these, you have what looks like fudge right after you've got the chocolate and the syrupy stuff mixed together. You can even take it out of the pot and shape it like chocolatey clay. As a Book of Cookrye experiment, we decided to see if we could make it into homemade chocolate truffles. So, we took a small ball of the chocolate stuff out of the pot and coated it in cocoa powder.

This was then left to sit out while we got the brownies mixed and into the oven. However, while the chocolate stuff in the pot did taste amazing, there were signs that we may not have accidentally found a delightful and easy truffle recipe. The cocoa powder which is supposed to both keep the aspiring truffles from sticking together (and also add a lovely dose of unadulturated chocolate to the outside) was failing to do so.

Within fifteen minutes, the "truffles" were leaving skid marks on the counter. It was a shame the truffle idea failed because they tasted delicious.

So the recipe did not produce chocolate truffles. That's all right, it never claimed to be a recipe for chocolate truffles. It is a recipe for brownies, and as a brownie recipe it is amazing, delicious, and divoon.

Delicious Strawberry Shakes!

We at A Book of Cookrye would like to extend a laurel and hearty handshake to Marcus, for he has arrived at a new apartment! Marcus and I kept meaning to convene at his new domicile, but (miserable realities of adulthood being what they are) never seemed to both have the time at the same time. And so, a full year after he has moved to his domicile, we were finally able to christen his kitchen! (Yes, it was already well broken-in and therefore beyond christening since he's been living there a year, but that is a minor point.)

Strawberry Shakes 8-12 strawberries ¼-⅓ can condensed milk 1 to 3 tsp vanilla Ice Wash and remove leaves from strawberries. Thoroughly liquefy in blender with milk and vanilla. Add ice to taste and blenderize.

Unfortunately, the one night that both of us had open with neither an engagement that evening nor a morning shift to wake up for, it was time for new groceries to be purchased. Whatever would we make in a kitchen that has so little? We found a handful of strawberries which looked remarkably edible for a week in the refrigerator. Usually they're mold-coated and oozy, these were just kind of shrivelled.

Also, we found lurking in the back of the refrigerator a mostly-used can of condensed milk. We didn't know what we would make of any of this, but it seemed a blender would be required for wherever this took us.

The condensed milk had dried out in the refrigerator. I admire the restraint of anyone who can have a can of such deliciousness in their refrigerator for so long without just eating it. This poured out so slowly you could make the drop falling out of the can wobble and shake.

Some things just take time.

We didn't know if this blender full of stuff would become part of a batter, turn into a pie, or turn into a highly-sweetened failure. But while we didn't know what end result we were going for, it seemed pretty obvious that the next step must be to turn the blender on.

Holy snizzbat! That is the fakest-looking pink I've ever seen come from anything that didn't involve half a bottle of food coloring! Marcus and I both tasted this and agreed it needed to be spiked. You ever taste something and just implicitly know it will taste better with alcohol in it? I don't mean those oversized slushee things with umbrellas in them that are used as training wheels for those who wish to get drunk but cannot tolerate the taste of alcohol. Those are used to cover up the taste. This creation, on the other hand, seemed like a little alcohol would complement the sweet strawberry mess in the blender and make it better.
However, neither one of us wanted to get drunk this particular evening. While discussing the merits of liquor as a flavoring vs whether anyone will be inebriated after drinking it, somehow the phrase "about the same alcoholic content as cake batter with vanilla extract in it" came out. Whereupon we took the idea literally and added a splash of vanilla. (Side note: does anyone else think that foofy vanilla vodka is just that clear vanilla extract in a bigger bottle? Both taste like vanilla and are about 40% ABV.) Having resolved this, we decided to just throw in a couple fistfuls of ice cubes and call this creation finished.

So... pretty...

I already knew how it tasted because I'd been testing it by the (daintily-dipped) fingerload the whole time. But what does Marcus think? After all, it's his refrigerator we're cleaning.

Considering that he knows how long all of this has lurked in his refrigerator, he was pretty blasé about this.

"IT TASTES LIKE A STRAWBERRY SHAKE!"

And indeed it does! The condensed milk and strawberries with nothing added had tasted like... well... condensed milk and strawberries. But adding about two capfuls of vanilla had not only made them stop tasting like two separate things, but added that extra... that extra something or other. It tasted exactly like what we have gotten many times from many a drive-thru.
Given how very little fruit or dairy goes into fast-food shakes, the resemblance astonished me. That said, as someone who really likes drive-thru shakes, these were fricken amazing. Also, the refrigerator is now cleaned (or closer to it).

The Allegedly Best and Oddly Familiar Brownies

As we've mentioned before, we at A Book of Cookrye really love brownie recipes. We have multiple recipes on file for different kinds of brownies- hypersweet brownies, super-dark and nearly-bitter brownies, extra-gooey brownies, not-the-best-but-they-only-take-half-an-hour brownies... and so, when we saw this recipe, it seemed like a personal challenge from the writer!

Cooking with the Families of Saint Peter's Community, 1988

"Even if you think you have the best Brownie recipe ever, this is better." I don't think I have the best brownie recipe ever, but this recipe claims to be better than literally every brownie recipe I have ever tried and all those which I haven't gotten to yet. Is it?

Book of Cookrye cooking tip: Be sure you have removed all butter wrappers before proceeding.

We at A Book of Cookrye approached this recipe not with skepticism at such a daring claim right above the ingredients list, but with excitement. Surely anyone with the nerve to put such a note above her recipe and her name below it would have made damn sure it's a good one. Therefore, we were dead certain that these brownies would be divoon.

As we set the pot of stuff to boil, the allegedly best brownie recipe ever looked an awful lot like making fudge. However, concern arose because every other brownie recipe we've ever made uses an ungodly amount of butter (or shortening which I feel kind of guilty about). Like, half a box for a 9x13 pan's worth. We'd started to think gobs of butter were necessary for your batter to turn into brownies. But this recipe uses just a quarter stick of it.  That's only one eighth of a cup. You'd use more butter making two grilled cheese sandwiches.

Were we going to literally bake fudge? The chocolate chips and the boiled stuff look like slightly runny fudge. Did someone make a batch of fudge one day, fail at it, and decide to throw flour and eggs at the problem in hopes of salvaging the mess?

Here it must be noted that to absolutely no one's surprise, this brownie batter was shaping up to be absolutely delicious. However, as a recipe note, a whisk was required to flog out the last lumps of whatever refused to mix in.

All right, we're dumping in the last of the brownie things and this batter is getting harder and harder not to eat. Of course, we at A Book of Cookrye routinely have difficulty not eating brownie batter, so this is in no way unusual. Behold how lovely and scrumptious this pan of chocolate goo looks!

Yes, I lined the pan with foil. And I will continue doing so until I have a working dishwasher.

When removed from the oven, we had what looked like amazing, crisp-crackly topped brownies! However, since it was the middle of the night, we chose to bake them in the special outdoor oven we got to prevent fumigating the house with our love of garlic. It appears that if we're going to attempt to bake things for others in said oven, we need to do something about the tilted table on which it rests. Or, more realistically, glare at anyone who complains about a slanted cake and tell them that anyone who is so nitpicky about dessert didn't really want any.

As the brownies cooled, they grew a sinkhole. This did not make us worry about whether the recipe was a failure. It just meant that what was previously just baked chocolaty goodness was turning into even denser chocolate stuff.

Besides, even if we worried about the appearance of brownies (which is a daft thing to worry about),the recipe came with a built-in concealer.

See? You'd never know the brownies collapsed on themselves. And since the icing and the brownies are nearly the same color, the crumbs that got in the icing barely show up! That is the only reason these brownies have such confidently-swished swirls of icing on top. However, upon tasting the icing, I lost a substantial amount of faith in what I had just made.
Anyone looking through my previous culinary perpetrations will notice that there are a lot of desserts. Furthermore, as I think I said somewhere in a recipe that used a can of the stuff, when I was on an all-liquid diet following a wisdom tooth removal, I may or may not have eaten condensed milk out of the can. With all that said, the icing was too sweet even for me. It tasted like straight powdered sugar with a little cocoa that fell in by accident. I know the deep shade of brown makes the icing look really chocolaty, but it's not.

Forcing aside misgivings and assuming that the icing recipe that went with the brownie recipe was the perfect amount of the perfect topping (something anyone claiming to be writing the best brownie recipe ever would surely ensure), we dumped the whole bowl of it on top. As you can see, any one piece of what's in the pan appears to be about equal parts brownie and icing. However, the brownie underneath the icing is tantalizingly near-black with (presumably) gooey chocolaty deliciousness.

Upon tasting it, I recognized the brownies immediately from countless pot lucks I've been to in the past. This has never happened to me before. There have been a few things that were familiar, but this is the first time I've ever made a recipe and, upon tasting it, known that I've had this exact thing before. It's oddly disconcerting.
That said, the icing was too sweet and there was too much of it. Like, you couldn't taste the brownies at all for the powdered sugar overload. They were actually bitter and kind of salty under the barely-diluted powdered sugar the recipe said to put on them. It tasted like really cheap mix with that weird chemical aftertaste that no amount of canned icing covers.
However, if you scraped the icing off, the brownie under it was in fact really good. This recipe may merit an uniced revisit to see if, when left without gobs of powdered sugar on top, they live up to the recipe's claim.

Egg Wash Does Not Make All Bread Look Good

As we found out when making all those sausage rolls in the name of tasting the grim existence of 1930's Britain, if you brush beaten egg on your baked things, it makes them extra crispy-looking and browned on top. When making a roll recipe that calls for two egg whites, we chose to attempt to gain presentation points by brushing the two left-out yolks on top before baking. Care to see how well it turned out?

Yes indeed, our attempt at "that gourmet touch" made the rolls look like disgusting disease pustules! Just to prove I did not burn them, let's crack one open that you may see the inside.

See? The roll is not dried out, the bottom is not blackened, and in all other ways these rolls are not as overbaked as the egg on top makes them appear to be.

You may wonder why the rolls are so orange. This recipe calls for mashed potatoes, and we inserted a leftover sweet potato into a blender and used that instead. If you ignored the rolls' burnt appearance, they were delicious. However, one would be wise to not attempt fancying up things in unfamiliar ways when others are expected to eat them.