TWD - Applesauce Spice Bars

I seem to have terrible trouble posting on Tuesdays for Tuesdays with Dorie. Thursdays seem to work much better . . . so here I am posting on Thursday.

This week's recipe was Applesauce Spice Bars. They are like traditional spice cake with raisins and pecans and are supposed to have a brown sugar glaze. I had trouble with proportions again this week. I followed the recipe exactly and did not have enough glaze to come close to covering the cake. You can see the result here:


Sure - it still tasted good, but I was really looking forward to the brown sugar glaze and it wasn't even noticable in the final product. Next time, I will double the glaze recipes.

The only change I made was that I soaked the raisins for about 8 hours in whiskey before using them in the cake. This was mostly because the recipe called for "moist plump raisins" and I only had hard nearly stale raisins in the back of the cupboard (neither I nor my children are big raisin fans.) So, I made them plump and moist with whiskey. Very similar to the way I used to catch men in college.

Anyway, it was also very good with ice cream:

TWD - Brownie Buttons

Wow. Summer has just not been good for blogging. We are in the process of a lot of home improvement and moving and a garage sale last week and on and on and on. I actually made the Banana Cake last week but didn't have the energy to post about it after all of the painting and other home improvements. (Plus, I was disappointed because it basically tasted like banana bread to me and, frankly . . . there was an awful lot of banana cake in that recipe!)

And, now this week's Tuesdays with Dorie post is late too! But only a day late, I will add. Let me just say first that these Brownie Buttons were deadly delicious! I seriously thought about making another batch right after the first one cooled. I made them with the orange zest, which was WONDERFUL and added the white chocolate on top. They were perfect little snacks and would be very fancy to take to a party or something.

The only problem is that I doubled the recipe and only got 24 mini-muffin sized brownies out of it. And I would like to know what kind of mini-muffin tins are 3/4 full after adding only a teaspoon of batter? I must have abnormally large mini-muffins tins or Dorie has abnormally small ones.

Perhaps I should not be a glutton and want a super-sized portion of the perfect mini-brownie bite, but these were good! And I would have to make a quadruple batch if I wanted to take a respectable amount to a party. I guess that isn't the worst thing that has ever happened to me, but after the portion sizes on some of the other recipes in this book (i.e., Pineapple Dacquoise and the Perfect Party Cake), it was odd that this one was so small.

Anyway, the next time I make these brownies, I am totally hiding them in my car so only I can enjoy them. They were that good!