march sunlight brings... snow?

Finally, a little food update in the update! AKA: WHERE DID FEBRUARY GO!?!?
So, one of my good foodie friends runs a brownie baking company here in Göttingen, and she asked me a couple weeks ago to play around with various ideas for recipes, ingredients, and extra stuff for brownies. Which, as you can guess, I’ve been more than happy to do. She supplied me with around 3 kilos of different kinds of chocolate, and told me to have at it. And boy have I! I’ve been baking pretty much constantly for the past 2 weeks, much to my roommate’s dismay. (or, rather, to his girlfriend’s dismay, he’s turning into a fatty :D ) I’ve played with different cocoa percentages, different types of chocolate, cocoa, etc. I’ve also played with the recipes, and with ways to spice up brownies. The ones I made today, I’m particularly proud of. Made two different batches, both with 88% cocoa powder, and decided to go with cupcake tins. One batch was gonna be S’more-y, so I made a nice little graham cracker crust (with Leibniz cookies, can’t find graham crackers in the germ!) Then I put brownie batter on top of the crust, and put a marshmallow on top of that, and baked it till it was delicious and golden brown. The other batch was a cheesecake brownie, so I filled the cupcake tins with a bit of the batter that was a bit firmer, made a little dent in the middle, and filled those dents with some cheesecake recipe I made up, and had flavored with Clementine juice.
Both turned out really really well, flavor-wise, although the brownies themselves were a bit bitter, and a bit strange, consistency-wise (too much cocoa powder, not enough moisture). So yeah, all in all, great times baking this past week.
Lets, see, what’s going on with me? Oooh, so much! February BLEW by like nobody’s business, and now we’re already into march! AAAGH! Next weekend I’m going to Rome! One of my college friends and her sister are gonna be in Rome for the next couple weeks, and told me I HAD to come down, so of course, I’ll go out of my way to oblige them :D so, I’ll be heading down there on Thursday, and coming back Sunday, hopefully with TONS of pictures and a screaming liver and pancreas. Oooh the foodage and boozage are gonna be amazing. Cannot wait.
Then, the week after that, the 19th, my Easter break starts! I have almost 3 weeks off for easter, so Aidan and I are going to be going to the UAE to visit an aunt and her family. I’ve never been, so I’m incredibly excited!! The spice souks, the old mosques, the burj khalifa! YAY! I’m literally gonna be running around from place to place squealing like a piggy and taking pictures. In addition to the excitement is the fear. See, those of you who know me know that I’m paler than the average albino, and being that the sun hasn’t shone in northern Germany since approx September, I’m a little paler than usual. And going to a desert. With 500 days of sunlight a year. =bad sunburn for Sean. So, I had my first experience in a tanning salon. I’ll tell you how that went as soon as I can sit down again without wincing.
Happy march!
-seany