Hey there. We're veteran cookbook authors Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough. Together, we've written three dozen cookbooks . . . with more on the way. We've sold almost 1 1/2 million copies and tested/developed tens of thousands of recipes. This is our food and cooking podcast!

In this episode, we've got a one-minute cooking tip about music and cooking! We're making a great recipe for fudgy vegan recipes. And we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week.

Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:

[01:43] Our one-minute cooking tip: Music can make cooking and even eating better!

[05:53] We're making fudgy vegan chocolate brownies.

Here's the recipe:

Position the rack in the center of the oven and heat the oven to 350F/175C. Line an 8-inch/20-cm baking pan with parchment paper.

Melt 2 1/2 ounces/80 grams dark chocolate (70 - 79% cocoa solids).

Stir in 1 1/4 cups or 250 grams granulated white sugar or caster sugar (by weight not volume). Stir in 1/4 cup or 60 milliliters olive oil; 3 tablespoons or 62 grams molasses or (better yet) black treacle; and 1 tablespoon or 15 milliliters vanilla extract. Finally, stir in 2/3 cup or 160 milliliters unsweetened almond milk.

Now blend these in a SECOND bowl: 1 cup or 120 grams all-purpose or plain flour; 3/4 cup or 62 grams unsweetened cocoa powder; 1 teaspoon baking powder; and 1/4 teaspoon table salt.

Stir in the flour mixture, then stir in 1/2 cup or 56 grams chopped shelled walnuts. Scrape and spread every speck into the prepared pan.

Bake until puffed and set, about 20 minutes. Cool on a wire rack for at least 5 minutes before cutting and serving.

[18:54] What’s making us happy in food this week? Nori and wasabi chili crisp and Luden's cough drops.

Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this is the podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

And I'm Mark Scarborough, and together with Bruce, we have

written three dozen cookbooks.

We are writing the three dozen and first cookbook currently.

I can't wait to tell you about it.

In fact, oh, some people on Facebook and social media have asked, are

we writing a vegan cookbook, given especially this episode of our podcast?

And the answer is, sort of.

So I can't wait to tell you about the sort of vegan and vegetarian

cookbook that we're currently writing.

This is gonna be strange, but it is!

There's, uh, it has a vegan edge to it, that it does.

What about the bacon

recipes we went over this morning?

There are only, like, a handful of things that couldn't be considered vegan.

In the book, there's maybe out of 425 recipes, there's maybe

five that couldn't be considered not just vegetarian, but vegan.

It's insane.

Okay, so we're writing that cookbook now.

We'll tell you much more about that down the road.

It's super exciting.

It is.

But we have a one minute cooking tip about what to do if you hate cooking.

I don't know why you're on this podcast with us, but good for you.

Because you love us, that's why.

Oh, that must be it.

We're going to go to the kitchen and make some fudgy.

olive oil, yes, vegan brownies that, uh, this recipe is going to appear

both on our website, bruceandmark.

com or cookingwithbruceandmark.

com.

It'll also probably come out in our newsletter.

You don't have to copy it down now.

If you're in the car, don't have a wreck.

You'll get it if you're signed up for our newsletter or you go out to

our website and find it under this podcast and we'll tell you what's

making us happy in food this week.

So let's talk about Hating to cook.

Today's One Minute Cooking Tip is about food and music.

And here's my theory.

It's a long way from hating to cook, but go on.

If you hate cooking, then do things to make it more enjoyable

while you're in the kitchen.

Music.

Sure.

I play music all the time when I'm in the kitchen

usually really trashy

Europop.

Europop, Afropop,

K pop.

Yes, that's you is the K pop master.

So yes, exactly.

You played stuff that I have to put earplugs in for.

But not, it hurts my Beethoven ears, my Bach sensitive ears.

But

it's not just Just in the kitchen when you're cooking.

Music is great with food.

If you're someone who likes to put music on during a dinner party or even just when

you're having dinner, try it at lunch.

You know, I remember starting when I was a teenager and my family would have

dinner every night putting music on and my parents thought it was weird at first

and I would put music on because the stereo, the stereo was in the other room.

That's what I'm laughing about.

I did the same thing.

And then I blasted it and I tried it once at my grandparents house.

And my grandmother would have no part in it.

First of all, the only records she had were like Yiddish folk songs.

Oh God.

Yiddish folk songs over dinner.

That's not where I was going.

This must be the way you know someone's gay.

Because I did the same thing.

I went and put, I'm old enough that I opened the big console stereo

with the The cabinet that opens from the top and I put a record on.

I'm sure it was like Montavanti Strings or whatever those were, or

some Ray Conniff singers or something from the dark age, Perry Como.

And I put it on during dinner and my parents were so like, what?

In the world is going on.

And why is this going on?

I should have just said gay.

Yeah, I've been done with it.

I want, I want to do a thing on social media and find out

if other gay people do that.

Did you put music on when you were a teenager during dinner?

Okay.

So here's the thing.

I don't think that's the primary way, you know, you're gay, but,

uh, well, okay, we'll leave it.

Okay.

If you like having music at dinner and you do it at a dinner party.

It can be tricky.

Can it?

Yeah.

Well, um, this is a whole different subject, but yes, if your friends are

musicians and they come over for a dinner party and you like to play music, do

ask them if it's okay if you play music.

Musicians are different class altogether in so many ways, but they're a different

class altogether because they're so into music that music can be very distracting

and they can become lost or obsessed with or irritated by the music that's playing.

I wouldn't dare.

We have a Good friend who is a concert classical pianist and

she comes over all the time for Bruce's Chinese inspired menus.

She herself is Taiwanese and she allows us to put music on.

She says, fine, but I would never put like the Goldberg variations are, which

is what she played her PhD recital in.

So I would never do.

Which she played on our piano too.

Yes, exactly.

And that, which we get lost in, Oh, that guy's not doing it

the way I do it and blah, blah,

So, be careful with musicians in music.

And my personal taste is no lyrics.

Unless they're in a language I don't understand.

Right.

Because if I'm hearing English lyrics, I'm going to be distracted.

So, put them on in any other language, and I'm good.

Yeah, yeah.

We have a friend who got his PhD in tuba.

So, no tuba music when he's here.

No, well, no.

He doesn't like really much music during dinner.

He's one of the ones who said to me, Mmm, maybe not.

Yeah, I'm off duty.

So, uh, yeah.

Just be careful about musicians in music.

But do play it in the kitchen.

It will make.

Cooking such a better task.

Okay, before we get to the kitchen itself in which we're gonna make

these fudgy olive oil Brownies that dare I say it are vegan.

Let me say that we do have a newsletter This recipe will

probably appear in our newsletter.

I'm ready Yeah, it probably will appear in our newsletter.

You can sign up for that newsletter by going to our website Bruce and

Mark And that's with a K mark.

com or king of Bruce and market.

com.

You can sign up there.

And as I always tell you, we do not capture your emails, nor

your names, nor your addresses.

You can't have two Norris, but I just did it as the writer.

And we don't capture any of that.

And you can always unsubscribe at any moment.

And I do not let MailChimp, the provider.

Capture your name and your email.

So it's completely guilt free and fuss free, and you can

always unsubscribe at any time.

That's the way you can find out that newsletter.

And other than that, we're off to the kitchen.

We had such a great response to our vegan.

Fudgy chocolate cookies is a such a popular

podcast, and it was popular in videos on Instagram reels

on on our tick tock channel.

It was great.

So we thought we would offer up our fudgy olive oil vegan brownies.

And what kills me is when you mention olive oil in

baking, people are like, What?

How do people not know that you could make with olive oil?

I think people I think the olive oil game has up so much over our lifetime

and over our cooking careers that people now know all about these really wild,

buttery, expensive, grassy, herbal, herbaceous, I'm using as many adjectives

as I can throw at it, olive oils,

freshly opened tennis balls.

Yes.

That's our joke is what, what do things taste like?

Oh, dryer lint, belly button lint.

Um, what you want to say when you drink a glass of wine.

Mmm, tennis balls.

Anyway, we listen, we make a joke about how these things taste.

But again, the olive oil game has so upped over the years that in fact, um,

people are used to really high end stuff.

And really, you don't need a high end olive oil for baking.

In fact, you want, in most cases, a mild oil, but you still want to use

extra virgin because of the viscosity and the texture and you want to make

sure you're really getting olive oil.

Someday, somewhere,

I really want to cook with extra slutty olive oil, but that's a

whole different matter entirely.

Does that involve music in the kitchen?

Probably does.

So, so what we're going to do is to start out, we're going to turn the oven

on 350 Fahrenheit or 175 centigrade, and we're going to turn on convection

or if you're in the UK, the fan.

So 350 Fahrenheit convection or 175 fan.

And then Bruce is going to line an eight inch or 20 centimeter

square pan with parchment paper and explain how you do this.

So here's the thing I have used to be the biggest.

fan of baking spray.

You did.

I am so not the biggest fan of baking spray anymore.

We've converted you.

We've brought you to the dark side.

When we lived in Manhattan, and maybe I've said this story before,

but I'm going to say it again.

We, I would never use that spray in the kitchen because I didn't want

to get my cabinets greasy and dirty.

So what I do, I go out in the hallway.

So there were The hallway was so slippery from years of spraying this stuff.

If you put your hand on the wall of the hallway in our building,

you would fall down because your hand would just slip down the wall.

And eventually the building renovated and they painted all the hallways, and so

then I started doing it in the stairway.

Oh, excellent.

It was the most dangerous stairway in Manhattan.

It was.

You don't want to go there, so.

Partly because our kitchen was four feet.

feet wide.

So, I mean, it was this thing that it would just go everywhere.

But now Bruce has become an aficionado of the parchment.

So I line everything with parchment.

And here's how you line a square pan with parchment.

So I have my 13 inch square of parchment.

Now, if you buy sheets of parchment, they're usually 13 by 18.

So cut it down to a 13 square.

That's

33 centimeter square for anyone not in the . Backwards us 33 centimeters.

Okay, go on

and you're going to use a scissor to make Diagonal cuts from

the corner towards the center.

You're going to make about a two and a half to three inch cut.

That's about a seven

centimeter cut.

Go on.

On each corner towards the middle.

That way, when you now put this sheet inside, those

corners are going to overlap.

And it's going to slip right in, and you're going to have

a beautifully lined pan.

If you want to see how this is done, just go to our TikTok channel.

There's a quick little TikTok there, cooking with Bruce

and Mark, of me doing this.

You

have no way of knowing this about me, but long before I was an English major,

and long before I went to grad school in literature and all that stuff, I was the

chemistry nerd of all chemistry nerds.

And so, of course, I got totally into metric.

And I remember in 1975, in Chemistry 1, I bought a centigrade thermometer for our

house outside, and my mother flipped out.

Oh yeah,

you communist.

I know.

You were a communist.

I was a socialist from long back.

And I put this centigrade thermometer on the back porch of our house, and

my mother absolutely freaked out.

Your Texas Republican mother was not going to like that.

No, she actually said we don't live in Russia.

So.

Ha ha ha.

So I have been a fan of metrics for a long time.

It's how you do in chemistry.

And I thought I was just going to, you know, normalize metrics.

Did you ever go with the metric clock with just

nobody ever went with that?

That's such an insane thing.

Lisa Simpson does it in one episode on the Simpsons.

It's a thing.

they toyed around with it in Hungary once.

If you don't know, it's the day is divided into 10 hours, the hours

are divided into 100 minutes, so each minute is 100 seconds.

So actually a second is not what you think now.

A second or a minute is not what you think now.

It's a crazy idea, and it's never going to fly because the clock has become so

globalized in our weird 24 hour problem.

Okay, so let's get off this metric.

Okay, we're going to go on to our one bowl batter, and I have already broken up.

Two and a half ounces or 80 grams of super dark chocolate and

melted it in the microwave and we used I believe this was 78%.

Yeah, 78.

So what you want is the percent number is the percent of cocoa

solids and you want that number to have a seven as its first digit.

So somewhere between 70 and 79 percent is where you want to hit with this because

you want really nice dark chocolate But you don't want a ton of bitterness.

So he's got this melted and stirred If you don't know about melting

the chocolate in the microwave, just do it on what'd you say?

10 second burst?

Did you say that already?

No, I guess I I'm saying it.

Okay, great.

So in 10 second bursts, I already did this.

I know.

So you don't, you know, don't stick it in there for a minute and a half, put it in

there for 10 seconds and then stir it and then do it again and then do it again.

But it's so much easier than a double boiler.

Okay, so then What we're gonna put in here is one and a quarter

cups of granulated white sugar.

And if you're not in the US, we're gonna use 250 grams of

granulated or cast your sugar.

So go by weight.

Don't go by volume if you're not in the us, but if you're in the US it's one and

a quarter cups of granulated white sugar.

And of course, the ingredient we talked about before.

I have a quarter cup.

of extra virgin olive oil, which is 60 mls, and I am getting every drop out of

this measuring cup because I'm not wasting

it.

And also into this bowl, we are putting three tablespoons, now

I'm going to tell you what we're putting, but what you can put.

We're putting three tablespoons, uh, uh, uh, you can put.

You can put three tablespoons of molasses, that's about 65 grams of molasses.

We are actually, because we are so snotty, using black treacle.

I love black treacle.

Don't know black treacle.

It's this fabulous molasses like substance, very priced in the UK.

And if you go out to our YouTube channel, Cooking with Bruce and

Mark, you can watch me make parkin.

And I use black treacle in my parkin.

And this is the first time I really got introduced to it.

And so I became obsessed with black treacle.

It's a

whole thing.

And if you go to our Facebook group, Cooking with Bruce and Mark, I'm going to

put a link there for where you can get.

black treacle online so you can get it

sent right to you.

Alright, and then a tablespoon or 15 mls of vanilla extract.

Please don't use imitation, use the real thing.

And?

Two thirds of a cup of almond milk.

And that's unsweetened

almond milk.

160 mls of unsweetened almond

milk.

And I'm whisking that up and that's all nice and thick and syrupy.

And into that is going to go a flour mixture.

And we're going to do the flour separately to make sure it is all done.

So in this other bowl, Mark has already measured 120 grams of

plain flour, all purpose flour.

One cup.

Or one cup.

Of all purpose flour.

I am dumping into that 62 grams, or 3 quarters of a cup, of unsweetened flour.

cocoa.

Yes.

And the question will come up, dutched or natural.

It doesn't really matter, does it?

Which you use here.

It doesn't matter.

I mean, dutched is going to dissolve more easily than natural, but

it's in the color differences.

Dutch makes it darker.

Dutch makes it a darker color.

But you know, either way, unsweetened cocoa powder is what

you want.

And a teaspoon of baking powder and a quarter teaspoon of salt.

Don't forget the salt.

It's crucial.

Whisking that up.

And now we're going to fold that flour mixture Into our chocolate mixture,

and we're not going to overdo it, we don't want to develop too much gluten.

So we're folding

that in.

And remember a fold is a rotating motion with a rubber or silicon spatula.

You want to kind of lift off the bottom and pull toward the top and

then around and around in circles.

You don't stir.

And then we're going to put a half a cup or 55 grams of chopped walnuts here.

And we're going to fold that

in as well.

Do not skip the nuts because brownies without nuts.

It's like a date without kissing, I don't

know what it is.

My father so would have disagreed with you, but okay, go on.

Yeah, well, your father's wrong.

Um, uh, careful, don't speak ill of the dad.

Okay, so, um, my father would have definitely disagreed with you.

Alright, so

I'm spreading that mixture now.

That's like

a huge fight my parents always had.

Why didn't they just buy two different kinds?

By two different kinds.

My mother made

brownies.

So she should have put the batter in the pan and just pressed nuts into half of it.

No,

that would have never come up.

She folded the nuts into the pan.

I mean, it was her batter, let her have it.

Okay, anyway, so now we're going to get this into that parchment lined

pan.

Yep, and it's going to go in the oven.

Twenty minutes, or until puffed up, and then we're gonna cool

it and taste it.

Go with puffed, and is there a tester mark here that we want?

No, just puffed up.

Okay, so what about the feel on the top of it?

It'll feel semi firm.

These are gonna be fudgy, right?

So these are gonna take a while.

We're not gonna taste these until they're really cool.

Totally cause we're coming back in like five hours

Okay, so we have let this cool for a long time and Bruce is right These were

very very fudgy and they kind of had to settle they fall down They collapse and

they settle and they get very fudgy.

That's what we want

I'm so glad I used the parchment because I had no sticking issues

and I'm holding a fudgy dark piece of brownie and Smells good.

I don't even bother smelling,

I'm not French.

What, what do French smell everything?

What is with that?

I don't know.

But I'm not French, so I didn't smell it, I just ate it.

You know

what, in America we don't smell.

We just shove it in our mouths.

And that's the deal.

So anyway, these are super,

super dense.

They're fudgy.

I wouldn't want to eat, now I like these, but I wouldn't want

to eat Like a pan of these things.

What's wrong with you?

I'm gonna eat the whole pan.

Oh my gosh.

Um, I think these need milk, desperately.

That's me, because I'm a U.

S.

citizen.

I know a lot of people gross out at the thought of drinking milk.

I, I said one time

Something about a glass of milk with chocolate cake, and somebody on social

media said to me, no adult drinks milk.

And I thought, well, I guess I do.

What about the billions of people that go to Starbucks Yeah.

Drink.

Milk.

I don't know, but um, I, you know, a cup of tea.

This does need something because it is so rich.

These are good.

Yeah, I

like these.

Again, these are pretty amazing.

You'll notice that there are no eggs.

There's no butter.

There is vanilla.

I guess someone might think almonds are an animal product, but I don't know.

They cast a shadow, so they must be animals.

Okay, now wait a second.

I have a thought based on that.

Since you can't have any plant matter that produces a fruit or a seed without

it being pollinated by an insect, wouldn't wheat then be only around

because of insects, and therefore Well it's not a question of whether it's

around because of animals, it's a question of whether it's a product

of animals, and no one would say that wheat is a product of animals because

he says, reminding you Some pollination happens because of wind, so I don't

think that what you're saying is

right.

What about the insect rights activists?

I think you don't want to You're just trying to be insane.

Forcing those, those poor bees to pollinate your food.

Well,

you are, and I don't know that they're so poor, but okay, I don't, I haven't checked

their economic wherewithal, but um, fine.

Uh, and by the way, it's poor, not poor.

What are those poor bees gonna do?

Poor, as my mother would say.

Uh, we're not, we're not using a pitcher.

We're not poor.

We're poor.

Um, so anyway, I don't know, but these are really delicious brownies.

You can find them on our website, you can find them in

our newsletter, all those places.

Before we get to the last segment of this podcast, let me say that it

would be great if you could connect with us in some way in the Facebook

group, Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

social media, our website.

We're delighted to connect with you.

We have a Tik Tok channel, cooking with Bruce and Mark.

We have an Instagram feed, cooking with Bruce and Mark.

Isn't that clever?

We've done it all the same.

Um, you can connect with us in so many different ways.

And up next, what's making us happy in food this week?

You go first, Mark.

I am going to go first.

And the first thing that is making me happy in food this week is a chili

crisp that Bruce makes with wasabi.

peas.

And I know that wasabi peas are not traditionally chili crisps.

If you know anything about chili crisps, they are a very hot,

grainy, nutty, seedy concoction.

Um, a lot of people might know the one that kind of hit the world stage,

the Lao Gan Ma chili crisps, but there are now, you probably know,

dozens, maybe hundreds of chili crisps out there, including G Daddy.

S.

Z.

E.

Daddy, which is made, I believe, in Brooklyn.

Yeah.

And it is absolutely one of my favorites.

But Bruce makes it to Lady Crisp with wasabi peas and nori.

I do.

And it has this wildly spicy horseradish wasabi, uh, Fishy, seafood y, yeah.

Slightly seafood y taste to it.

It is so delicious on cream cheese on a cracker.

Oh, yum.

It is hard to fathom how good it is.

And I just gave you a hint about the pseudo vegan cookbook, but I'm

not going to say anything else.

That's just some recipe testing, which made me very happy in the last week.

What's making you happy in food

this week?

Uh, Luden's Black Cherry Cough Drops.

Oh, I You know.

I start to snort.

I snorted.

It was so funny to be.

I wait before you say anything.

I got sent to detention in fifth grade from eating too many Luden's in class.

So please do go on.

stash of them in my drawer.

I was cleaning out my office and my knitting studio this weekend, and I found

a bag of Ludens and they hadn't expired.

So they don't expire.

And there I looked at the ingredients.

They sued your throat because they're one of the main ingredients.

The active ingredient is pectin.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

I sat at my computer editing videos that have been just like eating

the whole bag of Luden's cough

drops.

Well, you as I would have been sent to detention.

I actually had detention.

Because

you

ate too many cough drops.

Oh, yeah.

What kind of school did you go to?

My friend and I were passing Ludens back and forth to each other.

What, after you

sucked on them?

No, why were they going back

and forth?

Well, I mean the box was going and it's back when it came in a little

paper box or whatever and But

they're still individually wrapped in wax paper.

Yeah, they were

they were individually wrapped and he was passing him You know, I was taking seat.

Was this the

Rattner

boy?

This was the Rattner boy and we both got in big trouble from too many Ludens

But I only like the cherry, the honey flavor ones were disgusting.

I don't know anything about anything except that there are cherry ones

and I thought they were candy.

I didn't know they were medicinal.

Pectin.

So, pectin.

Oh great.

So, jelly.

By that logic, jelly is medicinal.

You could just,

if you have a sore throat, eat a jar of jelly.

Suck on peach jam all day

long.

No, I'm, yeah, I'm jelly.

Eat a whole jar and you'll be fine.

Okay, that's our podcast, we're so idiotic.

That's our podcast.

And we love that you're along on this journey with us.

Thank you for being here this week with us.

We appreciate that you spend your time, your podcast time with us.

And we certainly are having a great time.

We hope you are too.

Every week we tell you what's making us happy in food.

So please tell us what's making you happy in food this week.

And if it's really funny or really great, we will talk about it here

on Cooking With Bruce and Mark.

Okay.

Bye.