Nikki, Dafny and I had fish and chips at Jack's Fish Spot -- greasy and salty and delicious. I ate mine while we were waiting for the others to rejoin us. Jen and Megan went to La Vaca, and
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tatterdamelion got chicken teriyaki somewhere in the neighborhood. It looked fire-engine red, and Jen (who tried a bite) said that it was not really very spicy (although he had asked for spicy), but it was full of flavor. After we all regrouped and started walking back, we were ensorceled by the beautiful displays of caramel apples in the window of the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. Nikki and I split a plain caramel apple -- a sweet, crispy-yet-not-too-hard green apple, drenched in perfect, sticky-yet-not-too-sticky caramel. They slice it for you there, which makes sharing one much easier.
(A Bacon Maple Bar (really!) would also have been acceptable. But driving to Oregon for dessert seemed a bit ambitious. Also because none of us had a car anywhere nearby.)
Right now my office is treating everyone to impromptu root beer floats! They have orange soda, too, in case you don't like root beer. Orange soda + vanilla ice cream = Creamsicle-y goodness.
And, in case all that was not enough sugar -- tonight is Nikki's "Castle Falkenstein" game, and we are having a brownie-off.
tatterdamelion is going to make New Mexico Chile Brownies (having toyed with, but then rejected, the idea of Banana-Rum Brownies), and I have already made Orange-Ginger Brownies -- a little orange oil and some chopped crystallized ginger. Mmmm. I almost made Bacon Brownies, but in the end sanity prevailed.
Comments
I have high hopes for the New Mexico Chile Brownies...we'll see how they turn out. Next time, I'm going Caribbean and making them with puree of bananas and dark rum, but I need riper bananas than I was going to get yesterday. For this, I'll have to get the bananas at least 3 days in advance to let them soften up.
To top, I caramelized a tin of sweetened, condensed milk (the small one was enough), and added a dash of cayenne, two dashes of the chile powder, and another dash of cinnamon. After the brownies come out, I drizzled the du leche topping over the brownies.
Changes I would make next time would be: either a slightly spicier chile powder, or a touch more. These barely had any heat, and it's not that I want them to be HOT, but I'd like to taste just a bit more spice. I would also line the pan with parchament paper or foil so I can just lift the brownies out and cut when they're done. Mine fell apart taking them out of the pan, and so presentation was a mess.
Next experiment: Caribbean brownies, by adding a swirled pure of banana, dark rum, turbinado sugar, and a slight hit of cinnamon. I want a marbleized look, with a nice blend of chocolate with a cream-cheese brownie texture. We'll see if that works.