Butterscotch Brownies & A Gocco Project

Still using HTCE every chance I get. I am learning (as was inevitable), though, that Mark Bittman is not infallible, nor does he have the answers to every culinary quandary. I mean, it's kind of a misnomer. That book does not tell you how to cook quite everything. I read a review of it once that it's too overwhelming if you're trying to decide what to make, but if you know exactly what you need a recipe for, it's a great resource. WELL. Let me tell you, last night we wanted to grill a steak, and all Mark Bittman did was confuse and frustrate me.

That story has a happy ending, since Andy grilled the steak to perfection (I'm still not quite over how amazing it was and how I want another one right.now. which is saying a lot of this meat-disliker). Oh well.

Anyways, one more recipe I made (last night) was the Butterscotch Brownies aka Blondies (pg. 718). I've been eyeing these since I got the book, since, well, they sound yummy. And they're so simple to make, and I always have the ingredients on hand. So I whipped up a batch last night. I mean, they were ok....but the quality definitely reflects the simplicty of the recipe. I've had blondies before, and they were much better than this. As far as a bar goes, the texture turned out great. I'll take the credit for that and knowing when to take them out of the oven! They were just so homogenous. Every bite the same, as brownies are wont to do, but this was not necessarily in a good way. Buttery and mild tasting, but boring. Will probably not make them again unless someone asks me to make an albino, yawn-inducing easy dessert.

In other exciting news (not-food-related), I broke out the new Gocco yesterday and it was a huge success! I spent most of the day designing and by about 10 pm I was ready to print. It was a big experiment, but it couldn't have gone better. The best part was that it was such a blast and I can't wait to do it again! Printing is definitely 100x more fun than designing, but I think that's just because I'm still getting to know Illustrator and all its counterintuitive (to me, for now) quirks. Yay!

A Rosh Hashanah card on 2 different shades of yellow cardstock. I used 3 different color inks. It's supposed to be an "apples and honey" thing. I hope people get it.