I Second That!... From the Heart

Phew, my second post... okay, not really. I've been baking, and blogging, then baking and baking, and blogging, and baking... well, you get the point. At the end of the day, I didn't publish the posts and they all remained as drafts. Each post was never good enough for me to publish. My brother, who is also my web designer, reminded me that my blog is whatever I want it to be and is a form of self expression. Still, I continued to hesitate.

The last few weeks have been humdrum in my baking journey. I've been going through one of my baking textbooks and have learned a lot about sponge cakes, the first basic type of cake in building my foundation. I am faster at buttering and flouring pans, I now know what "ribbon stage" looks like and how long it takes, I've got a system in place that allows my ingredients to be perfectly set in measurement and temperature before coming together in cake harmony. But the fire inside has dimmed slightly. It was until the week of my friend Charlene's birthday party.

As I pondered what I wanted to make for Charlene, ideas popped into my head like pop-up windows during unsecured web-browsing (o_0). I abandoned my textbooks and baked from the heart. I took ideas from my personal recipe book collection, and melded them with ideas from the web to create my first alcohol-inspired dessert: The Whiskey Caramel Brownie.

Originally the idea was sparked by my friend Charlene, the birthday girl. Charlene's usual drink at the bar is the "Jack & Coke"; that is a shot or two of Jack Daniel's whiskey mixed with cola soda. I made a thick whiskey caramel sauce, shaped them into balls and, they held together by being rolled around in sugar. Then, I created a cola cookie by adding reduced cola soda into a plain cookie batter. I refrigerated the dough so it would be pliable enough to wrap around the caramel balls. The cookie came out okay but the caramel ended up very chewy. I thought to myself, "how good would this taste in a chewy, chocolatey brownie!"

I made a basic stove-top brownie with semisweet chocolates and swirled in the whiskey caramel sauce. The brownie came out very soft and with a slight gritty texture from the caramel becoming crystallized within the brownie batter during the baking process. The crystallizing was unexpected. I was going for a more dual-textured brownie of gooey caramel and chewy brownie. Nonetheless, the brownies were a hit at the party, especially with the birthday girl!

Since then, the fire has reignited within me. Whenever I bake for someone close to me, I visualize a dessert in my mind that's especially for them. I want it to have the perfect taste, the perfect texture, and the perfect look to what I have in my head. That's how I developed my red velvet cupcakes. I baked them till they tasted exactly how I wanted them to, and I shared them with my friends and family.

So as it stands now, the whiskey caramel brownies are not perfect. While everyone at Charlene's party praised the brownies for what they were, it still didn't match my vision. So back to the drawing board it is! More booze, more ooey-gooeyness, and more chewy chocolatey... I'll be so excited when it finally comes together and when all the experimenting pays off when I offer the finished product to everyone. Stay tuned for all the brownie bits!

With the purpose of creating and sharing something wonderful for someone I cared about, the passion had filled me up once again. Now, here I am blogging wholeheartedly and not thinking twice about hitting this publish button.