Charm City Cook: A Delicious Adventure Begins

About a year ago, I started playing around with two recipes I found online for salted caramel brownies. Heard the word salt and thought, YES! After changing the ingredients and measurements a few times, I ended up with what I felt was a darn near perfect brownie – rich, dense, fudgy, chocolatey, a tiny bit salty.

Then, I started doing some weekend cooking for private clients – busy people who just want a nice home cooked meal that would feed them on Sunday and also give them leftovers for part of the week. They wanted simple good food prepared with local, organic, ingredients (in-season from the Waverly Farmers Market whenever possible) including dishes like herb roasted chicken, butternut squash risotto, cheddar corn chowder, shrimp scampi, desserts, etc. I offered the salted caramel brownies to my clients. And…they flipped. OUT.

I found out over time, too, that they are even better a few days after they are baked and camping out in the fridge. They become more dense and there’s something about letting it thaw slightly and biting into a rich, thick brownie (and looking at the salt and caramel added to the top just before they are packaged) that just makes you happy. Even for me, the gal who prefers savory to sweet nine times out of ten. This is my kind of dessert.

Then things got interesting. I was telling my friend Susannah about them and she offered to sell them at her amazing shop, Ma Petite Shoe. If you’re not familiar with Ma Petite Shoe, they have been selling shoes and chocolate on the Avenue in Hampden for over ten years now. Such a great shop! Susannah is someone I trust and admire and we’ve been friends for many years, so it’s perfect that she is the person I’m working with to launch my side biz. So, now I deliver periodically to Ma Petite Shoe and each time I do, the brownies fly out the door. They are boxed ready for gift giving and sell for $5.99 each. Worth every single penny. Many of my friends refer to them as the “crack brownies” but I didn’t think that name was really the “brand” I was trying to create…but you can call ’em that if you want.

So, get to Ma Petite Shoe, hon. Also, I will have a booth at Friends School’s Holly Fest this Saturday, November 17 from 10-3 – selling food photos, brownies and jars of salted caramel sauce and three kinds of jam – fig jam, bacon bourbon pepper jam and grapefruit ginger pepper jam. Great to have on hand during holiday entertaining season and also for hostess gifts and stocking stuffers.