I have to admit, I was a little bummed to see that Baked Sunday Mornings had Grasshopper Bars on the schedule for today... Not because I don't love chocolate and mint (I absolutely do) or because I didn't think that the bars pictured with the recipe looked beautiful and delicious (I did). But I am in the middle of a little summer baking tasteoff project where I am trying to identify the best brownie. As a result, every other week I've been baking four different brownies and asking a group of tasters to compare them head-to-head, rank, and score them. I've finished all four of the preliminary rounds (although I am little behind in blogging about them -- but you can read about the first three rounds: classic, superfudgy, and fruity), but I am definitely suffering from brownie fatigue.
Nonetheless, for the sake of the bakealong, I was happy to give this recipe a try. To make these bars, you make a short brownie layer (which is essentially a half batch of the base brownie used for the Baked sweet and salty brownie), and then top it with a layer of mint buttercream and a chocolate glaze.
The buttercream is made by cooking sugar, flour, milk, and cream until it boils and thickens, beating the mixture until cool, incorporating butter and beating until fluffy, and then adding mint extract and creme de menthe. The day I was baking these, my husband Tom offered to pick up some creme de menthe for me on the way home from work. When he got home, he handed me a bottle of creme de menthe white, which is colorless (I actually didn't know that such a thing existed -- I had always thought that the Scope-green color was a defining characteristic of creme de menthe). I contemplated adding some green food coloring so that I would get the minty-green colored buttercream pictured in the cookbook, but I decided to leave well enough alone. The chocolate glaze is made by heating chocolate, butter, and corn syrup. The glaze was a thin and glossy mixture that spread to a perfectly level and impossibly smooth finish over the chilled buttercream.
I was very curious to see how this bar would compare to my standard mint brownie from Bon Appétit. I was expecting the grasshopper bar to be more minty, since it has such a thick layer of mint buttercream (which is flavored with both a teaspoon of mint extract and three tablespoons of creme de menthe). However, the grasshopper bar is only mildly minty, which I quite liked. The major flavor difference between this bar and the mint brownie is that the mint brownie has mint extract in the brownie as well as the topping, so there's no way to escape the mint. Since the grasshopper bar has no mint in the brownie layer, it seemed more chocolately and less minty overall to me (despite the fact that it has equal volumes of brownie and buttercream; the fact that the grasshopper bar has a fudgier brownie component no doubt also contributes to this impression).
I would have to taste the mint brownie and the grasshopper bar side by side to really figure one which one I like better. I decided not to take the grasshopper bars to work, because I didn't want to throw a wrench into the brownie tasteoff; the Bon Appétit mint brownie is headed for the tasteoff finals, and I wouldn't know what to do if people decided that they liked this bar better! I've already decided that I need to have the mint brownie vs. grasshopper bar tasteoff someday... But only after I've had a chance to recover from my current brownie overload!
Recipe: "Grasshopper Bars," from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.
Nonetheless, for the sake of the bakealong, I was happy to give this recipe a try. To make these bars, you make a short brownie layer (which is essentially a half batch of the base brownie used for the Baked sweet and salty brownie), and then top it with a layer of mint buttercream and a chocolate glaze.
I was very curious to see how this bar would compare to my standard mint brownie from Bon Appétit. I was expecting the grasshopper bar to be more minty, since it has such a thick layer of mint buttercream (which is flavored with both a teaspoon of mint extract and three tablespoons of creme de menthe). However, the grasshopper bar is only mildly minty, which I quite liked. The major flavor difference between this bar and the mint brownie is that the mint brownie has mint extract in the brownie as well as the topping, so there's no way to escape the mint. Since the grasshopper bar has no mint in the brownie layer, it seemed more chocolately and less minty overall to me (despite the fact that it has equal volumes of brownie and buttercream; the fact that the grasshopper bar has a fudgier brownie component no doubt also contributes to this impression).
I would have to taste the mint brownie and the grasshopper bar side by side to really figure one which one I like better. I decided not to take the grasshopper bars to work, because I didn't want to throw a wrench into the brownie tasteoff; the Bon Appétit mint brownie is headed for the tasteoff finals, and I wouldn't know what to do if people decided that they liked this bar better! I've already decided that I need to have the mint brownie vs. grasshopper bar tasteoff someday... But only after I've had a chance to recover from my current brownie overload!
Recipe: "Grasshopper Bars," from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.
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