NEW YEAR'S EDITION: spanakopita, fudgy brownies, and blueberry cornmeal cake

I don't think I have the time or the talent to thoroughly explain the importance of spankopita  to Greek culture. It's like trying to explain apple pie's significance to American culture! Anyway. I have spent the greater part of my adult life baking and cooking but had yet to make a pita. Our family eats pita throughout the year but especially on New Year's Day (we do a spinach pita instead of a sweet vasilopita but the idea is the same. Actually I think most Vlachs/Macedo-Romanians - certainly in my family, anyway - do a spanakopita on Jan 1). Anyway: I kind of cheated on this one because my mom made the dough, and then told me how to assemble the filling - a combination of spinach, feta, whole-fat cottage cheese, eggs, and salt and pepper - and then showed me how to construct the whole thing in the baking pan (including the "proper" way to roll out the dough - who knew?) and the result was a crispy, chewy, PERFECT pita: 

 

So, basically: I don't have the ingredient list for this. But I will SOON. Mom promised to supervise on another pita - one where I do all the dough, filling and assembling myself. So stay tuned :)

However I did throw together a batch of fudgy brownies, with a recipe cut-out from the side of a bag of King Arthur flour. They were absolutely decadent but I overcooked them by probably 5 minutes (I shut the oven off when the timer went off, and purposefully left the brownies there to firm up just a little but then I forgot they were in there!)

1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups cocoa (recipe calls for Dutch-processed but I used the Trader Joe's cocoa and it was still decadent)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease a 9 x 13" pan.

In a saucepan, melt the butter., then add sugar and stir to combine. Return the mixture to the heat briefly, just till it's hot, but not bubbling; it will become shiny as you stir it. Transfer mixture to a mixing bowl.

Stir in cocoa, salt, baking powder and vanilla. Add the eggs, beating until smooth, then add the flour and chips, beating until well-combined. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake the brownies for 28-30 minutes, until a cake tester comes out dry (though it may have a few crumbs sticking to it). The brownies should feel set at both edges and center. After 5 minutes out of the oven, run a knife along the edges. Cool completely before cutting and serving.
  

And since I was feeling extra fancy (read: crazy) and since we had a New Year's guest, I woke up on Jan 1 with the idea that we needed some kind of breakfast "cake" to go with our vasilopita. We were lucky to have a big container of blueberries and just enough cornmeal, so I made Smitten Kitchen's excellent Blueberry Cornmeal Butter Cake from page 245 of her cookbook. I upped the amount of lemon zest (Deb only lists 1/4 teaspoon - why??), used Greek yogurt in place of sour cream, and cooked it in a round glass pie plate instead of an 8" square pan and it came out so good it was gone in less than 24 hours! But alas, I did not get a photo of it before it was all eaten up :(

Since I am lazy: here are pictures of the recipe from the book: