death by brownie

It was late Sunday afternoon and I was craving chocolate. Chocolate with chocolate chips covered in chocolate chocolateiness . I get this way once a month- but I rarely act on it. But this time, I had to. My life depended on it. The easiest and fastest way to get this intense chocolate fix is to make brownies. Growing up, my mom often made brownies after sunday dinner.

It made me nostalgic and homesick so I called my mom to tell her that I made brownies. And that I made shepherd's pie. Cause she would make that for sunday dinner too. I miss sunday dinners with my family.

I posted the above photo on Instagram and Facebook, and I got a number of you asking for the recipe. 

I'll post it, but I have to warn you- it's so easy you're gonna think my baking skills are a hoax.

The best brownies ever:

(For a 9x13 pan)

2 bags Ghirardelli brand brownie mix, you know the huge box that they sell at Costco? Yeah, that one.

Follow the directions on the box, except DOUBLE the eggs. These make extremely gooey brownies that refuse to come out of the pan. So if you want them to cut nicely and come out of the pan, crack another egg in there. If you like them gooey, fine, but be warned- you'll end up eating them out of the pan.

Bake as directed. Cool totally and completely before frosting.


Cream Cheese Frosting:

1 pkg cream cheese, at room temp
6 TB butter, at room temp
2 cups powdered sugar
1 TB vanilla
1 1/2 TB heavy whip

Cream together cream cheese and butter. Add powdered sugar, one cup at a time. Add vanilla. Beat in heavy whip, then whip on high for 3 minutes.

Spread on brownies, lick the beaters and bowl clean. Set the frosted brownies in the fridge while you make the chocolate frosting.


Chocolate frosting:

1 stick butter, melted
2/3 cup cocoa
3 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 TB vanilla

Stir the cocoa into the melted butter. Alternately add the powdered sugar and the milk, starting with the sugar and ending with the milk. Add the vanilla. Whip on high until fluffy. Spread on top of the cream cheese frosted brownies. They end up kinda swirly, but I like it that way.

Cut them as big or as little as you want. Eat right away. Store in the fridge.

Let's say your husband hates chocolate, so making a 9x13 pan of them would be wasteful, but you need to have these brownies right away. Half this recipe and bake it in an 8x8 pan.

Your welcome.

maloree in the city

My baby sister Maloree came to visit for a whole week in June. She is a vet tech, and she was attending a veterinary conference here in lovely San Francisco. So she got to stay with us, sleeping on the floor of the sewing room on our uber plush air mattress. 

Tilda waiting for sister to arrive.

Maloree in China Town. 

I picked her up at the airport on a Saturday morning. We drove back home and walked to one of my fav places- Just For You cafe, where we had lunch. Then we walked to the train to go downtown. Since her birthday was coming up, she wanted to do a day of shopping in the city. Duh, who wouldn't? Anyway- since there is SO MUCH here, I thought we could do a mini tour of downtown so she could really decide where to spend her time/money on our shopping day.

We went walking around, and ended up in Chinatown. It was cool, since we weren't really planning to go.

Mal loved this street corner with the asian building on on side, and the old church on the other.

Chinatown is pretty cool.

It was a very bright and sunny day. But Mal was still a bit cold, being used to 90 degree weather and it was in the 60's.

We spotted this funny little alcove jutting out of this otherwise boring building.

And the financial district. Home of the tallest of buildings.

We saw this lady on the train into the city, I thought she was dressed up for a bar job or something. Her and her husband were taking turns signing opera on the street. I normally don't like opera, but she was signing Carmen, which I know from watching Sesame Street as a kid.

We ended the day at Britex- the Most Expensive Fabric Store In The World.

We didn't do anything on sunday, because sunday's here are crazy and we aren't fans of crazy.

On Monday, we went shopping.

Nordstrom is HUGE.

Sister's fav- chocolate covered strawberries from the best chocolate place ever.

Sitting by a mini Golden Gate in her new Tom's.

Huge vintage sewing spools. At this strange shop downtown. Can't remember the name.

On Tuesday we went to Fisherman's Wharf.

I got all dolled up in the skirt I made for myself. 

We took the train to the ferry building, where the Tuesday farmers market is. Mal wanted to try some expensive coffee. We waited in a realllllly looooong line. And it wasn't that impressive. Too robust for me.

Mal on the vintage street car that runs to Fisherman's wharf.

We stopped at Pier 39 and gawked at the double carousel. We decided it was too spendy so we took a photo instead.

Then we walked allllll the way down to Ghirardelli square where we sat on the beach and...

Shared a monster hot fudge sundae with chocolate dipped waffle cone. Mmmmmmm.

Then we drove to the Haight Ashbury, I had never been and it's pretty much legendary. We wanted to see if there were lots of hippies smoking weed.

No hippies, no weed, just some really cool shops. I'll definitely be back.

The RVCA shop has a back room dedicated to featuring artists.

A cool/creepy mural that a group of dudes from London asked us to take their photo in front of. They offered to buy us a soda pop, and we giggled at their accents.

Legs.

I thought this shop would be really cool. But unless you are looking to dress like a hooker for Halloween, it's really not cool at all.

As we were headed to Little Italy for dinner, some lame ass speeding lady hit our car. Mal got right out and documented everything with my camera, refused to back down when the lady tried to bully us, and totally had my back and got me through the experience like a pro. Thank you, lil sis. 

To compensate, we skipped dinner and went to Trader Joe's for snacks.

Some of our fantastic finds in Chinatown.

On Wednesday we went to the California Academy of Sciences, located in Golden Gate Park. This is it, viewed from across the way from the tower in the De Young building.

We love aquariums. When I asked Mal what she wanted to do while visiting, the first thing she said was "go to a cool aquarium". 

Squiggly little jellyfish.

Gorgeous plant life.

Some dude cleaning the glass.

Some fish have perma sadface.

Angelfish.

Beautiful Koi.

Bright pink starfish.

Albino alligator.

After we were finished with the aquarium, we went into the rainforest dome.

Poison dart frogs. I wanted these colorful guys as pets back when I had like 5 tanks in my bedroom as a teenager. As far as frogs go, the poison ones are the "prettiest". 

Gah! Look how cute they are!

And at the top of the dome, all the butterflies float around you. It's magical. This one is huge, and looks like and owl's face when its hanging down. 

I was sure glad I had my 100mm lens!

Then there is the section with the taxidermy. I'm not usually a fan, but they do an excellent job.

Giraffe's are impossibly tall.

Closeup of the living roof. This is the outside of the rainforest dome.

View of one of San Fran's many, many, house covered hills. 

Then we walked across the park to visit the Japanese Tea Garden.

Cute sister.

Pagoda.

Crazy tall bridge that you literally had to climb to get over. I went around instead.

I love mossy rocks.

Lil sister instagramming. I taught her the joys of instagramming while she was here. We were SO tired at this point- we had been walking all over the city, all day long for 3 days. So we sat in the garden and had some delicious Ramune.

There were tons of pretty Koi.

Speaking of all things Japanese, at some point we went to Japantown.

I got two amazing Japanese sewing books and some pretty cherry blossom fabric. I know- I can't read Japanese but maybe I can use the illustrations to follow along. Maybe.

On Thursday, Mal had her first day of the conference. I stayed home and did nothing but rest my achey feet! When she was finished for the day, we had a cheesecake baking lesson. We made caramel cheesecake.

During her lunch break on Friday, we took the cheesecake over to Danny's work- they had just moved into a huge building right on Market street. I wanted to bake something great and take it to them to congratulate them, so being able to bake with my sister and take it over was even better!

They loved it, of course. And so did we.

Except for the fact that we got lost looking for the building- we ended up in the not-so-great Tenderloin district thanks to google maps, and Maloree got a taste of culture that nobody should have to ever get a taste of.

Our favorite ice cream shop had been closed all.damn.week. Because they were on vacation. But Friday- they were open. So that evening we walked over and got ourselves a cone!

Saturday Mal went to her conference, and after we went out to eat. Sunday was a lazy day, we all slept in and then got ready to go to the airport. We were dropping Mal off to get to her flight by 4, and we were flying out to Portland at 5. It worked out wonderfully!

Ever since she was 3, Maloree has wanted a German Shepard. She had been obsessed with animals, especially dogs, all her life. It's no surprise that she became a vet tech, she has a love and compassion for them like I've never seen in anyone else. She decided to finally get a dog of her own. The same day we all flew out, her puppy also flew in. My parents picked him up, and he was waiting for her when she got home. 

Meet Ryker. Squishable, right? Full blooded, his dad is really from Germany, and he will be a working German Shepard. She is training and socializing him everyday. This is a dream come true for her, I am so proud and I am so excited for her. And I can't wait to meet him! 

We had a fantastic time. I miss her sooooo much- it was so nice to have so much time together. It was also very awesome that we happened to live in the city that they had the conference- otherwise she wouldn't have come and stayed with us. Come back soon!