Month: February 2004

Gina’s Chocolate-Tar Squares

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

Roger threw a housewarming party on Saturday — it was a lot of fun and there was plenty of food & beverages. In particular, Gina made what she called “chocolate-tar squares”. From what she tells me, she initially thought about making some brownies but then realized that she didn’t have the necessary accessories to the brownie mix (an egg, oil and so on).

So, she instead decided to make some brownie-shaped bars out of packaged cookie dough. I can only guess that she already had the cookie dough on hand since, if she were going to the store for it, she could have just as easily bought some eggs and oil while she was there ;). In any case, in a moment of recipe freestyling, Gina decided on the tar squares.

Simply, she placed the cookie dough across the bottom of a standard 8x8 pan — it was if she was making brownies, only not really. She baked them for the recommended 15 minutes or so, but found that they were still uncooked after that time. Since she had taken them out of the oven anyway (to test their doneness), she drizzled on some caramel before returning them to the oven (hey, why not?).

Apparently, these pseudo-brownies took almost a hour to cook through. Perhaps when sized into cookies, the dough is heated from all sides and bakes faster that way (?). After cooking, Gina sliced the chocolate-tar into squares for serving. All of this baking & preparation is from what Gina told me — I can only speak first-hand on the eating part ;).

As you may have already guessed, the caramel didn’t really form a layer on top of the squares but rather infused itself into them. And, as the dough is chewy to begin with, Gina coined the “tar” moniker. Perhaps “chocolate goo squares” or even “chocolate chewy squares” would have also worked.

As I can’t resist homemade treats, I soon tried one of the chocolate-tar squares. Sure enough, it was both chewy and square. And, the caramel made for a pleasant sidekick to the chocolate chips. In all, they were very tasty, especially considering that the recipe didn’t exist before that evening.

Being the chocolate aficionado that I am, I wonder if they could be made even better with a layer of chopped dark chocolate to accompany the caramel layer. Or, the chopped chocolate could be substituted for the caramel for an even-chocolatier treat. Perhaps some day I’ll have to give that a try.

Bruce Schneier on the Security of ID Checks

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Bruce Schneier is a cryptographer and the founder & CTO of Counterpane Internet Security. I came to know about him from one his earlier books, Applied Cryptography (I had an interest in cryptography at the time and I still do). In any case, I respect his viewpoints on security and cryptography.

I recently found an article written by Schneier for the San Francisco Chronicle on the false sense of security that ID cards can provide. I’ve never particularly felt an extra sense of security from having my ID checked all the time (airports and elsewhere) and Schneier put into words some reasoning behind that:

First, verifying that someone has a photo ID is a completely useless security measure. All the Sept. 11 terrorists had photo IDs. Some of the IDs were real. Some were fake. Some were real IDs in fake names, bought from a crooked DMV employee in Virginia for $1,000 each. Fake driver's licenses for all 50 states, good enough to fool anyone who isn’t paying close attention, are available on the Internet. Or if you don’t want to buy IDs online, just ask any teenager where to get a fake ID.

Harder-to-forge IDs only help marginally, because the problem is not making sure the ID is valid. This is the second myth of ID checks: that identification combined with profiling can be an indicator of intention. […]

In short, checking IDs doesn’t help much since they could be forged. And, even if an ID is too difficult to forge, confirming an identity doesn't automatically stop crimes — even if IDs are checked against a list of known “bad guys”, the Bad Organizations could still recruit minions that aren’t yet on any Bad Lists. Schneier’s reasoning makes sense to me, but something tells me we won’t be doing away with ID checks at airports any time soon ;).

Picard Doesn’t Like Space Travel

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In an interview with the BBC World Service Radio, Patrick Stewart said that he’s not terribly enthused about space travel:

“I’m a bit of a wet blanket when it comes to the whole business of space travel,” he said in a BBC interview.

As commander of the USS Enterprise on the show, his character Captain Jean-Luc Picard is an avid space traveller.

In an interview with BBC World Service radio, Stewart said he backed unmanned missions such as NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity and the UK’s Beagle 2 mission.

[…]

“As I get older my unease at the time and the money that has to be spent on projects putting human beings back to the moon, and on to another planet, is so enormous,” he said. […]

Of all people, I figured he would be somewhat excited about space travel. Still, I can understand his concerns about the costs involved; while I support NASA’s efforts as a whole, I’m not sure how I feel about the proposed Moon Trip II.

Food Pyramid to be Revised

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The Chicago Tribune is reporting that the Department of Agriculture is revising the ubiquitous food pyramid for release early next year. The article’s subtitle reads “The revised pyramid will likely offer 12 diet plans; the current one offers only three” — I wasn’t even aware that the current one had three versions. And in addition to more variations, they have other changes planned as well:

For instance, sedentary men between ages 31 and 50 would be urged to quadruple their consumption of dark green vegetables and legumes, triple the amount of whole grains they eat and double their intake of orange vegetables. They would also be encouraged to cut their consumption of starchy vegetables such as potatoes and solid fats by half. […]

Though I’m a bit concerned that the food industry will meddle with the final result, the proposed changes seem to make sense so far. “Cutting consumption of starchy vegetables” — hmm, where have I heard that before? ;) Kidding aside, I think the reduction in solid (saturated) fats is probably also a worthwhile recommendation.