A Treat for Your Valentines

Marbled Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies

These are not as time consuming as they look, and they're delicious. There are no calories in the scraps (of course not), so you can nibble those between meals.

I found this recipe in The Herald, but it comes originally from Jessica Segarra's blog thenovicechefblog.com.

Yield: 16 hearts, depending on size of cutter

Ingredients:

Red Velvet Layer:
3 1/4 cups flour
2 1/4 cups granulated sugar
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3 large eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
4 tablespoons milk, divided
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon red food coloring
2 teaspoons white vinegar

Cheesecake Layer:
2 8oz packages cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 13 x 18 jelly roll pan with butter or cooking spray.

In large bowl, whisk or sift together flour, sugar, cocoa powder, salt, and baking powder. Set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, vegetable oil, 2 tablespoons milk, vanilla extract, red food coloring, and white vinegar.

Combine the dry and wet ingredients, until completely combined. The batter will be a really thick, almost moldable texture...but don't worry, that's what you want. Remove 3/4 cup of the batter and place it in a medium bowl. Blend in the remaining 2 tablespoons of milk. Set aside the 3/4 cup batter.
Scrape the remaining batter into the prepared jelly roll pan. Smooth the batter to reach all the edges.

Now, with an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and sugar until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla, beating until combined and there are no lumps. Pour the cream cheese mixture on top of the red velvet layer and smooth mixture till it reaches all the edges.

Drop spoonfuls of the remaining red velvet batter (that you mixed with milk) onto the top of the cheesecake layer. Drag the tip of a knife up and down through the red velvet and the cheesecake layers, then back and forth to create swirls.


Use a heavy pan to prevent brownies from burning on the bottom. Bake for 25 minutes, rotating half way through, or just until the center is set and it no longer jiggles. Let cool completely on a wire rack before cutting. Use a medium sized heart cookie cutter to create the perfect Valentine's Day treat!

 
Tips: I found it hard to push the heart-shaped cutter all the way through the baked brownies. So I placed the flat side of a pancake turner on top and pushed down with my hand.

To get the brownie out of the cookie cutter, hold it upside down and push on the bottom with your fingers.

If you don't want to eat the scraps plain, you can whirl them into a milkshake.

Two Heroes

I just talked to my friend Vera Penz, who helps her husband Dave run the Kako retreat center for villagers in the vast, lightly populated Yukon-Kuskokwim delta of western Alaska. In summer, the Penzes get their supplies via Yukon River barge or by air. Winter travel is by bush plane or snowmobile.

The Penzes have help from volunteers who come from other areas of Alaska and across the lower forty-eight, but “winter is hard,” Vera says. They are mostly alone then. At age eighty, she is the sole bookkeeper, letter writer and paperwork person for the mission enterprise. Dave is battling a form of leukemia. When I called, he’d been out all day plowing snow from the runway and clearing paths between the buildings. It had “warmed up” to 11 degrees from last night’s 16 below zero. As we talked, I stood at our window, looking out at a light mist falling and rubbing goosebumps. It was 40 degrees outside our house. And I thought I was cold?

Within a radius of 160 miles of Kako there are fifty villages. Many are afflicted with alcoholism and attendant social evils. The subsistence lifestyle is as hard as it ever was, and there are few paying jobs, so many people live below the poverty level. Kako offers hope, through summer camps for children, teacher’s retreats, marriage seminars, men's and women's retreats, and short term Bible seminars. Most of the attendees are flown in, as are workers, speakers, and everything needed for their stays.

“In two weeks, we have a speaker from Moody coming to teach about forgiveness,” Vera told me. 

 Forgiveness is an appropriate topic in a place where abuse goes hand in hand with alcoholism.

“We’re so glad for the warmer weather and plenty of snow. The trails are good for those close enough to come by snowmobile, but we’ll have to fly people in from farther out.”

Dave and Vera both came to Alaska in the early ‘60s. They married after having lost their respective spouses and have since spent the last thirty years at Kako, reaching out to the people of the delta. Did I mention that they are two of my heroes?

A Good Day for Birds

A flock of snow geese with Mt. Baker as backdrop

A large proportion of this flock are gray-feathered young birds. Note one wears a collar.

    January and February are soggy months in northwest Washington. The ground gets so saturated the bluffs and hillsides slide under their own weight. Rainwater can’t soak into the flat fields of the Skagit and Stillaguamish Deltas, and it can’t run away, so it lies in a silver sheen beneath the sprouting grass or between furrows.

    The birds love it. Fields become shallow lakes where flocks of ducks preen and dabble. Harriers swoop in search of field mice forced from their burrows. Blue herons hold solitary vigil along the drainage ditches while hundreds of swans muddy their plumage foraging in plowed fields.

    We aren’t expert birders, but we’ve noticed some birds are doing things differently this year. Only a few snow geese spent the winter around Stanwood, compared to the usual thousands. There are far more trumpeter and tundra swans than usual. But we’re told that there are plenty of snow geese in fields farther north. Maybe they just don’t like to share their territory.

    Be that as it may, when the first day of February dawns sunny and bright, we join dozens of other motorists and cyclists on the narrow back roads of the Skagit Delta. Spring is in the air although a chill wind blows streamers of fog inland. New growth is sprouting, pussy willows blooming, alder catkins heavy tasseled with about-to-be-released pollen. Birds and birders are out in force.

    Nearing the village of Edison, we see cars stopped along both sides of the road. Spotting scopes and telephoto lenses aim toward the leafless alders. Eagles, so many I lose count, perch in the trees and pose for the cameras. Why so many? Next weekend Edison holds a birding festival. Maybe the eagles got word and are awaiting the festivities. (For more about the festival, go to http://edisonbirdfestival.com/2013-calendar.)

Of the 5 eagles in this shot, 4 are young ones.