Triangle Food Bloggers Bake Sale RESULTS

(My contribution. Recipe below. Photo courtesy Johanna Kramer.)

In two words: we rock. We raised more than $600 for Share Our Strength in just about two hours, selling all kinds of homemade deliciousness. This money will be used right here in our own community.

Here's the complete wrapup, posted by co-organizer extraordinaire Johanna Kramer (@durhamfoodie). And here are other recaps by bloggers I met:

Matt Lardie, Green Eats Blog (co-organizer extraordinaire)
Debbie Moose, Moose Musings

And here's some background on the national effort that we contributed to, courtesy Jyotsna Jagai (@themasalawala), whom I also met. Jyotsa's twitter feed reports today that nationally, food bloggers raised $23,000 for Share Our Strength.

I made mini-brownie-pie-thingies, which I called Brassies.

SHORT VERSION: use your favorite brownie recipe, and your favorite pie crust recipe. (If you use a storebought crust, please do not tell me, for I am a snob about such things. Boxed brownie mix is OK.) Grab a cupcake pan. Mold some pie crust in the cups, pour some brownie batter over it, bake at 350 until a skewer stuck in the middle comes out clean. Even if proportions are off, you will still have some balance of brownie+piecrust, which equals happiness.

Brassie recipe, LONG VERSION! Here's what I did on Saturday.

For the piecrust, I followed my standard recipe, which is based on Martha Stewart's "pate brisee" recipe, and which I've also seen other places. If you prefer shortening, great! Use that. Same thing with vodka, lard, whole wheat flour -- whatever works for you.

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 t. salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch size chunks
A few tablespoons of ice water

Method: Follow your standard pie crust method, which involves keeping everything as cold as possible at every stage; cutting the fat into the flour+salt; then adding just enough water until the dough holds together. Chill dough at least one hour or overnight.

Then divide dough into 24 roughly golf-ball sized balls. Mold them into mini-cupcake pan as detailed in my Pecan Tassies post. Anytime the dough gets sticky, or otherwise uppity with you, place the whole shebang into the freezer for five minutes.

For the brownie, I split in half the brownie part of the "Sweet & Salty Brownie" recipe from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, p. 93:

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 t. salt
2 T dark unsweetened cocoa powder (like Valrhona) (I used Hershey's)
11 ounces quality dark chocolate (60 to 72 percent), coarsely chopped (I used Belcolade bittersweet pistoles)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
5 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and cocoa powder.

Place the chocolate and butter in the bowl of a double boiler set over a pan of simmering water, and stir occasionally until the chocolate and butter are completely melted and combined. Turn off the heat, but keep the bowl over the water of the double boiler, and add both sugars. Whisk until completely combined and remove the bowl from the pan. The mixture should be at room temperature.

Add three eggs to the chocolate mixture and whisk until just combined. Add the remaining eggs and whisk until just combined. Add the vanilla and stir until combined. Do not overbeat the batter at this stage, or your brownies will be cakey. Sprinkle the flour mixture over the chocolate. Using a spatula, fold the dry ingredients until there is just a trace amount of the flour mixture visible.

Then, I spooned the brownie batter into my pie dough-lined cups, careful not to overflow. They will puff up. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until piecrust edges are starting to brown, and a toothpick/skewer stuck into the brassie comes out mostly clean.