España Por Favor...

Amis bon après-midi.

It is a B-E-A-utiful day today, so all of you should hopefully be reading this blog somewhere out in cafes, or parklands on your mobile phones or laptops. Few weeks ago, few friends and I decided to have a voyage en Espagne, well not entirely true...rather it was Spanish desserts that we were craving for. We went to this Spanish restaurant, España on Melbourne St (refer to location below post), recommended by a friend of mine. To put it bluntly, he said the food there is terrible, i.e. rubbish (many dishes were not seasoned properly, which is rather unusual as one of the first thoughts that come to mind about Spanish food is that it is high in salt!).

However, he highly recommends the dessert so that is in fact what we did go there for! We ordered several servings of two types of dessert (as well as coffee which is normally to be expected in desserts).

Churros - "traditional Spanish style crispy dough, dusted with sugar and side of melted couverture chocolate"

The churros here were rather chunky, yet extremely fluffy and light! It was almost like eating AMAZING donuts, except not as greasy or sweet. The churros was not the 'crappy' type of chewy lil pieces of dough that you get at 'amateur' restaurants or dessert joints, but rather they were generous servings and the way its presented on the brown porcelain plate gives it that homely feel. What I absolutely love about this is the fluffiness that you get when you first bite into it, and then the cinnamon flavour explosion hits your tongue along with the amazingness of the melted chocolate, as well as the cocoa sugar! That's right, not only is the outer layer coated with sugar, but cocoa as well (that's what makes it so amazing).

Pan con chocolate - "chocolate with thin bread wafers, sprinkled with salt flakes and sweet olive oil"

This was another unique dessert. I have tasted something to this, however the version that I've had before was somewhat more similar to a bread-pudding style. I definitely did like this dessert, but be warned, it is not to everyone's liking. What I like about it is the saltiness which breaks the sweetness of the chocolate mousse (which I can have LOTS of). The crunchy bread dipped in the mousse with the saltiness coming through with a cup of coffee - pleasures of sharing desserts with friends and having an easy evening out. Highly recommended ;)

Chocolate Brownie (Cookies??) with Peanut Butter Icing

Bonsoir good followers and readers, I have been MIA for a good 2 weeks or more due to my thesis and other outings which have kept me away from writing. However, I am back now and that's all that matters. My aim is hopefully 2 posts per week -  a review followed by a recipe of some sort. There's a few posts that I already have lined up, both recipes and reviews. Tonight however, I will start off with a recipe.

Donna Hay Magazine has just released a 10th birthday collector's edition for this month. It is definitely worth having a read of, especially those of you who are drink mixologists, and also those of you that LOVE baking with chocolate. There's a few recipes in there which isn't too hard to follow and has definitely caught my eye... even the handsome layered cake with the contrasting black and white on the cover page (I will definitely post that up asap if I do happen to attempt it). I downloaded the iPad version of the magazine and must say that I am VERY impressed. The interactive recipe step-by-step guides was very helpful in the cook mode, so for those of you with an iPad, I highly recommend giving this app a go (it's free as well ~ first issue of dhm for iPad).


Anyways, getting back to food, I attempted the chocolate brownie cookies (that's right...COOKIES!) with peanut butter icing as listed in the 'brownies' section of the magazine. The ingredient list isn't extensive so I highly recommend that you give it a go. I'm not going to list the ingredients on here (may be some copyright issues etc.) but if you're interested, email me and I'd be more than interested to help you out. Preparation time didn't take too long and the steps weren't too complicated. These cookies would make really neat gifts ~ all you require is some twine, cardboard and you'll be set!

My initial thoughts when I saw the picture in the magazine was how ridiculous the peanut butter icing looked - with the amount that they used. However, when I tasted it, I understood why. The saltiness from the icing cuts out the sweetness from the actual brownie cookies themselves, so its a tastebud save really (for example, salty caramel in macarons make it 'taste' less sweet, even though the amount of sugar in the actual macaron pieces are still the same).

Chocolate Brownie Cookie with Peanut Butter Icing served with Long Black (unsweetened)!

When something is "sweet" like this, you really need to serve it with plain black coffee (or strong tea without milk) to cut the sweetness out. The cookie is really fudge-y, soft and gooey; I think the chocolate pieces in the cookies gave them that little bit of extra bite. These cookies aren't meant to be crunchy, but they're supposed to imitate brownies after all. I think it'd actually be quite nice if you serve it warm just out of the oven, served with a dollop of the peanut butter icing rather than a 'sandwich' cookie as the chocolate pieces would still be flowing. Nevertheless, it is still rather nice when served cold.

The textures are quite nice with this dessert - slight crispy/crunch on the very top layer, followed by soft gooey centre, and if you happen to chew on a piece of chocolate, they do melt quite quickly; then you have the saltiness of the peanut butter icing. I'd recommend in cutting down the amount of sugar in the icing as the cookies themselves are sweet enough as is - caster sugar and the chocolate are both rather sweet. Give the cookies a go yourself and let me know how they turn out!