(Toni: read this after noon on Tuesday.)

I wanted to send Toni a little present to say, “Whoo hoo!” over her nice news of late. My first thought was to send a book from Amazon, possibly something about writing. What I wanted was, How To Enjoy Your Life As A Happy, Published Writer. But most of the titles I ran across were like

Being A Writer Sucks, Doesn’t It?

or

How To Get Your Horrible Manuscript Into Some Kind Of Shape (but don’t blame us if it can’t be saved, loser)

And I thought, This isn’t the sort of message Toni really needs right now.

Well, no books. And probably no novels, as she needs to buckle down and do some writin’. Okay, I could make her something. And she has noted all the baking I’ve been doing! I know, I’ll bake something and send it to her!

As usual when I think this sort of thing up, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I found the recipe I wanted to make and decided to make it Sunday afternoon, which meant I could freeze it Sunday night and then ship it off Monday morning. (Smarter would have been to make it on Saturday and freeze it two days, but sometimes my critical facilities aren’t all they could be.)

Of course, before I could get to Toni’s present, I had something I wanted for Mother’s Day: chocolate-chocolate-chip muffins, which required a trip by Sur La Table to buy the jumbo muffin silicone pans (which were cheaper than the nonstick pans, strangely). Simon woke me up at 6:30am and I immediately got cracking. For those of you keeping track, this means I messed up the kitchen once in the morning, cleaned it up, and then turned around and did it again.

The muffins were good, but not what I was expecting. For one thing, when I envision a chocolate-chocolate-chip muffin I’m thinking Devil’s Food. Extreme chocolate. The cake of these muffins was nothing special, I’m afraid. Not that this has stopped me from eating them, but I compare them to the chocolate-chocolate-chip muffins I used to get at Gelson’s on Tuesday mornings and they were lacking.

The time to make the brownies was right after lunch, so I can’t explain why I proceeded to read a novel (the very funny The Actor’s Guide to Murder by Rick Copp, one of the few novels I’ve read that definitely made me feel as though I were back in LA) and then go out for two hours by myself. I was supposed to be writing. The writing hasn’t been happening so much lately, so I didn’t get much of anything done. Darin took the kids to the Rosicrucian Museum, which evidently they both loved and were scared by, and then we all met up at the Sonoma Chicken Coop for dinner.

We came home to have Movie Night (we watched our old favorite, Totoro—here’s today’s scary gossip: evidently Disney has the rights to release a brand-spankin’-new version of Totoro, complete with all the bells and whistles, and they won’t because of the scene where the Dad is taking a bath with his girls…I. Hate. Disney.) and I got crankin’ on those brownies. (No crank was involved in the making of these brownies.)

When they were done and all cooled, of course I had to cut a small bit off as a taste test. I gave some to Darin and said, “I don’t actually have to send these to Toni, do I?” They were good. Very good. Of course, if I kept them in the house, I’d be likely to eat the whole damn pan myself, so I wrapped them up, put them in the freezer to get nice and cold, and then shipped them off this morning.

Of course, I’m worried about what condition they’ll be in by the time they get to Louisiana. For one thing: caramel. When the post office clerk asked me, “Are you shipping anything liquid or hazardous?” I felt like answering, “Not as of yet.”

I hope you enjoy them, Toni! And you don’t have to eat them all at once: they can be frozen! And you have large sons who I’m sure will be happy to take one or two off your hands. But you did say you needed chocolate for writing!

§

Gold Bar Brownies
From Pure Chocolate by Fran Bigelow

1 cup Caramel Sauce (page 177 or store-bought)
8 ounces (1 1/2 cups) whole almonds
12 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
4 ounces semisweet chocolate, cut into 1/4-inch blocks
1 1/2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
140 grams unsalted butter, room temperature (1 stick plus 2 tablespoons, or 10 tablespoons)
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons packed brown sugar
2/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon instant espresso powder
3 large eggs
1 3/4 cups cake flour, sifted then measured

Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 325F.

Lightly butter a 9-by-13 inch sheet pan or quarter-sheet pan.

Have ready the Caramel Sauce. It can be used cold, directly from the refrigerator. (I used a brand I found at Lunardi’s that was made with sugar and cream. Read the labels! No corn syrup, ever!)

Place the almonds on another baking sheet and toast in the oven for 10 minutes, or until their fragrance is released. Let cool, then roughly chop into 1/4-inch pieces. Set aside.

Melt the finely chopped chocolates (semisweet and unsweetened) in a double boiler over low heat. Remove when nearly melted and continue stirring until smooth.

In a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat together the butter and two sugars until light and very fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes.

In a small bowl, stir together the vanilla and the espresso powder. Add to the butter mixture and beat to combine. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well between additions and scraping the bowl several times. Pour in the melted chocolate and beat to combine.

Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold in the sifted flour by hand until no traces of white remain. Fold in the toasted almonds and the 4 ounces of semisweet chocolate chunks. The batter will be quite thick. Evenly spread the batter in the prepared pan.

Spoon the cold Caramel Sauce in tablespoon-size dollops over the top. Using a table knife drawn through the batter, swirl the caramel into the batter to marbelize. Bake for 45 minutes. When tested with a toothpick in the brownie portion (not the caramel), it will have moist crumbs.

Let cool in the pan 1 hour. Cut into squares and removed with a spatula. Store brownies in sealed plastic containers as long as a week, or freeze.