Baked, another one for New York

New York is a city rich with bakeries, and here's another one this Californian will file away for future adventures. Not only was Baked recommended by a friend and local to the area, but apparently their brownies are one of Oprah's favorite things. While I know the media queen has named a lot of favorite products, I also think she has probably had the opportunity (and the means) to taste some of the best brownies in the world. So I'm taking this place pretty seriously. An open request to Baked: I'm running short on flight money, so please consider establishing a California location.

Brownito ceases to habla English...

Have you heard of Brownito? He's a friendly, dancing brownie that serves as the "mascot and figure head" of a Dominoe's pizza Brownie Squares promotion.

Standing proud, Brownito is three feet tall with Mickey Mouse-like hands, wholehearted greetings like "Hola, soy Brownito!," and wicked break dancing moves he busts out at the click of your mouse. For a while, Brownito was bilingual, and performed his moves under the pseudonym "Fudgem" on the English speaking sister site. But every time I try to use the "visita a brownito en ingles para ver a fudgems" button, I get a blank page and a "HTTP 404 Not Found" message.

What gives Dominoes? I know the press release dates way back to August, but some of us English speakers were just getting to know Brownito in our native language. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful the legend still lives on en espanol. But this HTTP 404 business is a mystery indeed.

I suppose we should count our blessings. After all, the whole brownie promotion did bring us this humorous story.

Even so, I can't help but feel that these large corporations are just toying with our emotions, bringing friendly brownies into our lives and then changing their minds. I haven't actually tasted the brownies, but I sure liked the idea of a brownie hypnotically beatboxing and dancing to techno music. You just don't see that every day. It's breakthrough marketing if I've ever seen it.

Fudgem was soon replaced by another promotion to make way for Dominoe's Brooklyn Style Pizza, where anyone with the name "Brook Lynn", or "Brooklyn" was the recipient of a free pizza in honor of their name. Maybe if I name my future children "Bake Ree" or "Paste Tree" I can use them to get all sorts of free pastries from a willing corporate sponsor! I'd say it's definitely worth chancing it. (But along those lines, what was Gwyneth Paltrow thinking with the whole "Apple" debacle? I'll never understand it.)

In any case, Bake Ree it is! I have to keep my eye on the prize. That's right: I will become the most powerful American bakery hunting mastermind, whether my children like it or not. One day they'll thank me.

Hard crime and brownies...

Did anyone hear about the people who were caught breaking into a Dominoe's Pizza just so they could bake some brownies at 5:30 in the morning? I swear, that's all you hear in the news these days, hard crime and brownies, hard crime and brownies. Give it a rest Couric!

Speaking of good old Katie, one of her own blog entries came up in my Google alert under "American bakers". Google alerts are quite useful tools if you want to keep tabs on certain subjects through the internet. Just when I thought that Google GMAIL had made my life complete, the folks at Google made me fall in love all over again. I discovered Google Alerts, emails that Google sends me each day with articles relevant to any and every topic I might ever desire. In theory, this system is perfection, but recently I have had to come to terms with the following Google Alert dilemma:

Sometimes, Google Alert alerts me to things that I simply do not want to be alerted about. Take the aforementioned Katie Couric blog as an example. Since I have requested that Google Alert send me emails about "American bakers", Couric's blog post featuring "her own" apple pie recipe was included in my last Alert email. This sounds innocent enough, but little did I know the horror this blog would unveil. To be fair, you should really read this blog entry yourself for the full effect, but let me highlight my favorite moment for those of you who do not opt to click the link!

Throughout the entry, Couric describes a recent family outing of apple-picking, and this all leads up to the apple pie recipe at the end. I'm pretty sure Couric never took a course in food writing, because just before the recipe at the end, she shares with her readers that baking a pie with your family can be a great way to teach your children math, while adding, in parenthesis, mind you, that ("This is so wholesome, I’m about to throw up!"). Note to Katie: Parenthesis do not equal humor, and references to vomiting in food articles seem a bit out of place. But it gets even better. The crowning glory comes as Couric wraps up the article and segues to the recipe. To her readers, she offers these words of advice for all novice bakers as they prepare to read her tasty recipe: "Remember, if I can do it, you can do it! (that’s what I tell everyone about my colonscopy, but we can chat about that another time!)".

Okay, first of all, she spelled colonoscopy wrong. Doesn't CBS hire little blog proofreading underlings to take care of this sort of thing?

You can see that I hyperlinked that bad boy once again, because if you didn't want to read Couric's blog before, you might have some twisted desire to do so at this point. But if you really want my advice, don't bother. If you're thinking that something you read at the beginning of her entry will help you make sense of the end of it, you are sorely mistaken dear reader. When it comes to food writing, let's leave the colonoscopy references out of the apple pie articles, even if that means we have to go back to stories about hard crime and brownies. I liked it better that way.