BakeSpite.net

After a mediocre (if that) attempt at tackling baguettes from scratch (not to be attempted by the faint of heart) and a frustrating day of work, I was reminded of a scene from the movie Julie and Julia where Julie remarks, “You know what I love about cooking? I love that after a day when nothing is sure and when I say nothing, I mean nothing. You can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. That’s such a comfort.” What better way to make yourself feel better than with chocolate brownies? By adding chocolate chips!

If you don’t have a double boiler, find a sauce pot, fill with water and place a heat-proof bowl on top. Fill the bowl with semi-sweet chocolate chips and what else? Butter. Continuously stir until the chocolate and butter start to melt into each other. If your bowl doesn’t fit snugly (as mine didn’t), use a pot holder to keep your bowl in place. I did this, but managed to put the pot holder on fire. If this happens to you, stay calm and throw the pot holder in the sink!

Fire aside, the recipe is pretty simple (thanks to Southern Food on About.com ):

Ingredients:

8 ounces semisweet chocolate
1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 to 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preparation:

Heat oven to 350°. Grease and flour a 9-inch baking pan.
Melt chocolate with butter in a double boiler over simmering water until smooth, stirring frequently.

In a mixing bowl with an electric mixer, beat the sugar with eggs and salt until thick. Stir in vanilla and flour.

Stir in the chocolate and butter mixture. Stir in chocolate chips.

Spread in prepared pan and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

I’ve added a new section to GameSpite’s forums, specifically for food. In less than half an hour, it’s already seen a ton of activity! Clearly, you guys like talking about food. So: Please feel free to participate in the ongoing discussions by creating a forum account and chatting at Talking About Food.

Of course, you’re very welcome — nay, encouraged! — to comment here on the blog as well. I know you’re reading this, ’cause I can see the stats.

Hello, friends and mortals! Welcome to BakeSpite.net, our very exciting (maybe?) new food blog. I’m the guy who decided it might be interesting to have a food blog, and accompanying me is my fiancée, Cat, who decided to take the idea and run with it. Some credit is also due various people whose enthusiastic responses to my random Twitter posts about the food we’ve been creating recently made me realize that, hey, maybe people might be interested in seeing me write about something other than videogames.

Right. In my day job, I write about videogames. In her day job, Cat takes photos of interiors and architecture. Both of us have been looking for excuses to venture beyond the boundaries of our normal work — surely I can’t write about games forever. And even if I could, I don’t think I’d want to.  And Cat, for her part, doesn’t have many opportunities to write, to cook (when she’s on the road) or to experiment with lighting for food.  BakeSpite will hopefully be a great way for both of us to stretch about things we both enjoy (namely, cooking and eating).

It might also be an excuse for me to eat more interesting cuisine; I’ve been on a pretty restricted diet over the past year and a half, which paid off with my having lost 50 pounds and feeling great about myself. The variety of my diet suffered, though. But, if we’re writing about food, well, I’m obligated to eat things that are more diverse than what I’ve been subsisting on for the past 18 months.

I think both Cat and I have fairly different ideas about what this blog should be, so that should make for an interesting amount of variety in the tone and topics of our posts. But we’ll both be writing, and we’ll both be photographing food. (Please note that the nice photos will be hers.)