I was wracking my brains to try and come up with something to write for this late post--rushing as usual because I should have already posted it and the hours left in the day for me to get the rest of my work done are slowly dwindling. Nothing was coming to me and then I started thinking about how stupid I was to have spent all morning baking for the philosophy class feast we are having Monday and Tuesday. Not even for the baking in and of itself--I mean I could have made like chocolate chip cookies, or brownies etc., things I have made a million times, could basically pull together with my eyes closed. But no, I decided that if I was gonna go to the effort of baking that I might as well try something new, it wouldn’t take any longer right? Lately, I have been in that baking mood. It usually creeps up on me--after not having baked anything for a while I suddenly feel this urge to make cookies, or a cake, or macaroons, whatever--and I will sacrifice my work to make it happen.
In school on Friday, I was scrolling through recipes on Epicurious (a recipe website) and came across one for brioche. Brioche can come in many different forms, but essentially it is a really light and airy, and kind of sweet bread. Sometimes it comes in a loaf, but usually it is cooked in small muffin-tin like containers. Brioche is one of my favorite desserts ever--especially when there is chocolate or glaze or anything else sweet involved. This particular recipe was for chocolate brioche and I immediately was reminded of Mirabelle’s brioche, which I love. So, to make a long story short, I decided to make it. I think like 95% of it was the picture the recipe provided--the brioche looked so cute and delicious and light and I think I was hungry because it was right before lunch so combined, I felt like not making it wasn’t even an option.
I had never made brioche before but I had glanced at the recipe--there were no unusual ingredients, it didn’t look to bad. This morning everything went smoothly at first. I basically was supposed to dump everything into a bowl minus the butter, mix the bowl’s contents, and then slowly add the butter. I guess I didn’t realize that my old and puny hand mixer might not be sufficient for the job. By the time everything except the butter was mixed, the dough was like thick and gooey bread dough--which I should have known. I tried to incorporate the butter with my hand mixer and although it was kind of mixed in, it was nowhere near the even consistency called for. I had to stop when the mixer started to smoke. Forced to be creative, I tried using a blender type thing--the kind where the top has a big chute to dump ingredients in. After like ten seconds, this too started to smoke, creating dense curls of putrid black nastiness. What to do...the recipe said the dough was supposed to be elastic, and that to get it to that point required 10 minutes of mixing. At this point, the dough was little more than a lump that sagged--nothing “elastic” about it.
Finally I decided to put it in our ultra strong ninja blender and after being chewed up in five small sections as to not overwhelm the ninja blender, the dough was finally done. It looked like an alien substance, kind of shiny, still droopy but very stringy. It almost seemed like it was forming weird shapes of it’s own volition. After that, it was a piece of cake--knead the dough, let it rise in a bowl, and then stick it in the fridge, where it is residing currently. After a night to enjoy it’s newly created life, the dough will be rolled into small pieces, folded around chocolate, pressed into tins, and baked!
