After a few exchanges back and forth about what she and her husband and their daughters would like for dinner and breakfast, she requested that I also make these brownie buttons, a picture of which I had posted in a private family blog several months back.

I got started on them this morning (they hold up well for a couple of days after baking!) and are one of the easiest things to make. Though it only makes 18 little “buttons,” they’re the perfect treat after dinner, and doesn’t fills you up or makes you feel guilty.

The recipe is from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours (here’s the recipe), and I made a few changes: I didn’t add the orange zest, but I did add about half a cup of finely chopped walnuts, and I decided to dress them up just a bit and dipped the tops in some melted white chocolate.

I store them in a sealed plastic container at room temperature, and though this batch is being saved for tomorrow, the last one wasn’t even last for 24 hours, thanks to an appreciative husband and kids!

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

First off, pictures of pudding – especially rice pudding – never do the recipe justice.

Anyway, this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie was Black and White Rice Pudding (actually chocolate and vanilla!). I split mine in two batches, as was suggested in the recipe, because I knew my husband would appreciate the vanilla while the kids would devour the chocolate.

I’m also glad I read up on the Q&A for the recipe, otherwise I too would have ended up with rice soup instead of pudding and would have wondered what I’d done wrong!

I stirred the pudding every five minutes for about 50 minutes and it turned out perfectly. I didn’t put the full 1-1/2 teaspoons of vanilla in the white pudding because my husband likes it plain, but I may have put a little extra chocolate in the other one.

Maybe just a little.

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

I came across a very fun project a few weeks ago called Tuesdays With Dorie. A very large group of people basically make the same thing once a week and post their results in their blogs, with all the recipes coming from the (very awesome) cookbook “Baking” by Dorie Greenspan.

I’m not going to be able to participate in all of them every week because I’m going to stick with the ones that have chocolate in them (or that can have chocolate added to them!) so I can post them here, but I can’t post the recipes anyway – you’ll need to go pick up the book yourself!

This week’s project was Rugelach, which I’ve never made before but I’ll definitely be making again:

I love working with pastry and had fun with this one because it uses cream cheese with the butter, which made for an amazingly tasty, flaky pastry.

There were several options for the filling but I went with raspberry jam, chopped walnuts, currants, and mini chocolate chips (maybe a little more chocolate chips than what was called for!).

My two eight-year-olds had a blast helping me sprinkle the fillings on and my almost-ten-year-old enjoyed helping roll them up. It made a lot of perfectly bite-sized treats that the kids and grown-ups all loved!

Post from: Chocolate Bytes