A Year of Brownies - June

It's June, it's summer, it's HOT! Can't have the oven on for too long, so brownies, layered with ice cream from the lovely, Foodbeam? Hear hear! Only I never got so far as to do the cookie sandwiches - I just ate my cookies alongside banana ice cream from ParadIS. It was lovely!

METHOD:
This is a cookie, but unlike most cookies I make, there's no creaming of butter and sugar. Instead, you go the standard brownie route: melt chocolate and butter together, beat eggs and sugar, mix the two and add flour mixture. The batter ends up somewhat stiffer than a regular brownie batter, but only by a whisker.

INGREDIENTS:
These cookies use brown sugar - that's new, only my standard recipe has a mix of brown sugar and regular sugar. There's a - in comparison - tiny bit of sugar (30 grams), but that is more than made up for by the amount of chocolate - 200 grams. I used Valrhona Guanaja 70%.

chocolate:egg:sugar ratio:
Standard (January): 110:2:300
Meyer (February): 100:2:125
Nigella (March): 125:2:170
Smitten Kitchen (April): 85:2:265
Dodge's/Scharffen-Berger (May): 60:2:60Foodbeam (June): 200:2:150

THE VERDICT:
While a cookie by nature, texture-wise, these are almost a brownie. They come together super quick, the dough keeps and bakes really well from the freezer, and they get that crackly surface a proper brownie should have. They're in it to win it, The chocolate taste is rich and dark, but if I am to be brutally honest, they aren't brownies - they don't have the squidge, the je-ne-sais-quoi - and they're not square. But they're awfully good, and no bad substitute for a brownie. When I was to place these on the ever evolving LIST, they actually came out no. 3. So there.

THE RECIPE: HERE
I only got 20 cookies out of the recipe, not 20 sandwiches.

(btw., Foodbeam - or Fanny, as she is named - has moved to Sweden and now blogs over at Comme un Lait Fraise)

THE LIST:
1. Nigellas Brownies
2. The Little Red Barn Baking Book's Brownies
3. Foodbeam's Brownie Cookies

4. Meyer's Brownies
5. Smitten Kitchen Brownies
6. Jim Dodge's Cakey Brownie

A Year of Brownies - May

 

For the month of May, I'd decided to try a cakey brownie. I should probably let you know - and I guess I already have - that I much prefer my brownies fudgy, rather than cakey. But you know - science. Perhaps I was missing out, not ever trying out the cakey ones?

If anyone should know about chocolate (and hence, brownies) it oughta be The Scharffen Berger people. So I grabbed the cookbook I have from them, and found the aptly named: cakey brownie. They have other kinds, too, but this what was I needed. Here we go:

METHOD: 
The method in this cake involved doing a meringue to start - whipping egg whites with sugar, luckily nothing with thermometers and sugar syrup! I let the trusty KA do the job, and it was no problemo. The recipe did call for the meringue to be whipped until the sugar dissolved, and while it was whicking away, I started thinking whether my sugar ever dissolves?? Not just using this method, but Im pretty sure there's always a little grit to it... I always use cane sugar - I like the caramelly taste, but it is a little coarser than regular white. Hm.

The meringue is blended with the rest of the ingredients, and produces a pillowy batter. I could almost see it souffle right there!

INGREDIENTS:
This brownie has cocoa powder in it, the first of the ones I've made to have that. I guess it makes sense, when you want something drier... Considerably less sugar and chocolate.

chocolate:egg:sugar ratio:
Standard (January): 110:2:300
Meyer (February): 100:2:125
Nigella (March): 125:2:170
Smitten Kitchen (April): 85:2:265
Dodge's/Scharffen-Berger (May): 60:2:60



THE VERDICT:
Definitely cake-like and light, in fact so much so that I served them with creme fraiche and raspberries. (For the record, I often eat brownies out of the pan ;)) It almost souffle'ed in the oven, the fell back when I took it put. It was a lovely cake, but a cake - not a brownie. I tried chilling a few pieces, but it still never became the dense, fudgy thing I like. I'm not a convert. Peeps, we didn't even finish it. I've frozen the leftovers, and intend to crumble it into some ice cream some day, but this was a definite dud, for me. Tasty, but not my kind of brownie. But it was fun trying someting new!


Jim Dodge's Cakey Brownie - from The Essence of Chocolate (ha! I love it how all of the books I refer to are no longer available other than used. Is this the world's way of telling me I'm old?!)

Makes 18 1½ by 3 inch brownies.

9 x 9 x 2 inch baking pan.

4 oz. (115 grams) unsalted butter (I used salted, because I always do)
4 oz. (115 grams) 70% bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (I used Valrhona Guanaja 70%)
1/3 cup cake flour (I used 45 grams regular flour + 1 teaspoon corn starch)
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Valrhona)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup granulated sugar
4 large eggs, separated
optional: ½ cup coarsely chopped nuts or chocolate

Preheat the oven to 325 Fahrenheit/170 Celsius. Butter or line your brownie pan.

Sift together the flour, cocoa and baking powder. Set aside

Melt the butter in a small heavy saucepan over medium heat. remove form the heat and add the chocolate. Let stand, stirring occasionally, until the chocolate is melted and evenly blended with the butter.

Add ½ cup of the sugar and stir until dissolved. Stir in the yolks. Pour the mixture into a medium bowl and add the dry mixture, stirring until just incorporated. 

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the whites at high speed until a loose froth with large bubbles form. While continuing to whip, gradually add the remaining ½ cup sugar in a slow, steady stream. If sugar builds up on the sides of the bowl, stop the mixer and quickly scrape down the sugar into the whites. Continue whiupping until the whites form firm peaks.

Remove the bowl from the mixer and, using a rubber spatula, fold in the chocolate mixture. Fold in the chopped nuts or chocolate, if using. Scrape into the prepared pan and smooth the top with a few strokes of the spatula. Don't spend a lot of time trying to make the top perfectly even, because that could overwork and deflate the batter.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely before cutting.

THE LIST:

1. Nigellas Brownies
2. The Little Red Barn Baking Book's Brownies
3. Meyer's Brownies
4. Smitten Kitchen Brownies
5. Jim Dodge's Cakey Brownie

A Year of Brownies - April

Unsweetened chocolate. Oh, the woe is me. Unsweetened chocolate was the key ingredient in this months brownie, coming to you from Deb, over at Smitten Kitchen. Not easy to come by around these parts, let me tell you. Back when I started this project, I asked one of my friends going to New York if he would get me some, but even in the City of Dreams, he didn't find it. Well, he didn't find the Sharffen-Berger kind I wanted. Luckily, I had some at home, from a trip I did many, many moons ago - but it was long-past-it's-best-before-date. Not one to be deterred, I used it anyways - which may be an explanation for my less than impressive results. (yes, that was a spoiler right there...)

METHOD

You melt chocolate and butter, then whisk in sugar, then eggs. Similar to my standard recipe, but the batter became almost fudge-caramel like - long and dense, somehow. And you could tell there was a LOT of sugar in there, with it almost crystallizing.

INGREDIENTS:
chocolate:egg:sugar ratios:
Standard (January): 110:2:300
Meyer (February): 100:2:125
Nigella (March): 125:2:170
Smitten Kitchen (April): 85:2:265

Considerably less chocolate, much more sugar! Which makes sense, considering the quality of the chocolate - there's just les sweetness to it, naturally. (I tasted the melted chocolate - honestly not a pleasure!) This recipe also uses only caster sugar, no soft brown sugar.


THE VERDICT:
Tastewise, definitely okay, but sugary sweet. Texturewise, fudge-like - not chewy, not cakey, they felt more like a candy, with the sugar very noticable. This may have been caused by my out-of-date chocolate, but as they were, tasty enough, just not... a brownie, in my book. Deb suggest these are best cold, maybe even frozen - I never managed to try them frozen, but the suggestion has me wondering whether the fudge-like quality is enhanced by this, or would make them more brownie-like? I will try them again, should I get so lucky as to come by some unsweetened chocolate, just to make sure. Deb's recipes very seldom disappoint, so I am stumped as to why this one did... Perhaps my 13th. brownie should be one of her other brownie recipes, just to make amends?

THE LIST:
1. Nigellas Brownies
2. The Little Red Barn Baking Book's Brownies
3. Meyer's Brownies
4. Smitten Kitchen Brownies

A Year of Brownies - March

The first month of spring, and time for something new. For me, and The Year of Brownies, that meant really getting out of the comfort zone, in the form of adding something not chocolate to my brownies. Enter the walnut.

I've had bad experiences with nuts. There's nothing that can ruin a cake, bread or salad like a stale nut, and for a long time, I was the type of person that bought stockpiles of nuts, only to have them go rancid at the back of the drawer. And a bad nut will most certainly mess up the taste experience, so perhaps what I've not liked about nuts in my brownies was not so much the texture, but the (off) taste. Given time, I've learned to keep my nuts in rotation, and now buy them when I need them, so they're fresh and sweet.

There seems to be a trend towards me posting at the very end of the month, but I promise, these were baked on March 31st (hence the back-dating of the post). Nothing like a deadline, eh?

METHOD:
Slightly different from my standard, but similar to February's version - you beat egg and sugar together, then add that to melted butter+chocolate, and finally add flour and nuts.

INGREDIENTS:
chocolate:egg:sugar ratios
Standard (January): 110:2:300
Meyer (February): 100:2:125
Nigella (March): 125:2:170
More chocolate and less sugar than the standard; more flour than Meyer. Also, walnuts.

THE VERDICT:
I was very pleasently surprised by this brownie? These brownies? Terminology, people? Either way, pleasently surprised indeed. I'd read reviews around that they were dry and dull, but that was not the case in my version at all. Squidgy and yet cakey at the same time, the texture was just about perfect; ever so slightly crumbly, yet moist. Not to sweet, the chocolate and sugar very well balanced, whereas Meyer's recipe was just a bit too dark in taste for me to really love them. Texture wise, these may benefit from a couple of hours in the fridge? I have a small piece left that I'll try and put in there to see...

And you know, I liked the walnuts! For both texture AND taste. I'm looking forward to trying the recipe without the walnuts, I think I have to, to compare properly with The Standard, but I do think I have a new favorite.

THE LIST:
1. Nigella's Brownies
2. Little Red Barn's Brownies
3. Meyer's Brownies.

Brownies
- from How to Be A Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson, scaled down to ½ portion.
185 grams butter (she calls for soft, but you're going to melt it anyways, so...)
185 best-quality dark chocolate (I used Guanaja 70% from Valrhona)
3 large eggs
½ tablespoon vanilla extract
250 grams caster sugar
112 grams flour (plain)
½ teaspoon salt
150 grams chopped walnuts

Brownie pan measuring 22x22 cm.

Preheat the oven to 180 degress Celcius. Line your brownie pan - I use baking parchment.
Melt the butter and chocolate together in a large heavy-based pan. (Use a large one, because then you can use it for mixing the batter in - you know, less dishes to do afterwards.)
I a bowl or large wide-mouthed measuring jug, beat the eggs with the sugar and vanilla extract. Measure the flour into another bowl and add the salt.
When the chocolate mixture has melted, let it cool a bit before beating in the eggs and sugar, then the nuts and flour. Beat to combine smoothly and then scrape out of the saucepan into the lined pan.
Bake for 25 minutes. When it's ready, the top should be adried to a plaer brown speckle, but the middle still dark and dense and gooey. Keep checking on them, while they bake - the difference between gungy brownies and dry brownies is only a few minutes; remeber that they will continue to cook as they cool.

Makes a maximum of 24 brownies.

I'd like to call this: Reflections in butter and chocolate ;P

A Year of Brownies - February

February is my birthday month, so of course, we had to have brownies for my birthday. Choosing this particular recipe for this month made a lot of sense - in it's original listing, it makes 40 brownies and uses 750 grams of chocolate! No way was I going to find myself with that much cake around ALONE. I scaled the numbers back to 8/15 (original recipe calls for 15 eggs, hence the weird conversion), and even so, we had PLENTY of cake - even some for the fridge for a couple of days later. For some reason, they state in the recipe that the cake will keep for 2-3 weeks in the fridge. Yeah, not around here.

METHOD
Procedure-wise, this recipe has you melt chocolate and butter and add that to whisked together eggs and sugar. This is slightly different from my standard method, were the sugar is dissolved with chocolate/butter, and the eggs then added afterwards.

INGREDIENTS
The chocolate:egg;sugar ratio in my standard recipe is 110:2:300. The Meyer recipe has a lot less sugar, weighing in at 100:2:125. It also uses only caster sugar, whereas the standard uses a mix of brown and caster. (I use cane sugar, as that is my standby, not regular white caster sugar) Also, a lot less flour in this recipe. I should have put in chopped walnuts, but I just couldn't do it. I told you, not a big fan of bits and bobs in my brownie.

THE VERDICT:
At first mouthful, this brownie was more airy than expected, the chocolate/flour ratio in mind. I'd expected dense. Not at all. In fact, Martin deemed it a 'chocolate cake'. A good one, yes, but a chocolate cake. Not a brownie. We then proceeded to put a single piece in the fridge, and after a couple of hours had a taste. Crazy difference! Way more fudgy and dense, not nearly as fluffy or cakey. Definitely improved the overall mouthfeel to us. This brownie has a more full taste, it's very chocolate-y and dark, compared to what we're used to. Bearing in mind the lesser amount of sugar, it makes sense that we got a more full-on chocolate taste. It's not my preference, but it was a very nice brownie, that texture wise improved immensely from a rest in the fridge.

Meyer's Brownie
(measurements scaled down, hence the weird numbers)

400 g. chocolate (I used Valrhona Guanaja 70%, as suggested in the recipe)
213 g. butter (I used salted, as always)
8 eggs
608 g. sugar
104 g. flour
1/4 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
3 T. + 2 t. cocoa powder (I used Valrhona)
(160 g. walnuts, coarsely chopped)

Preheat your oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Line a baking pan measuring roughly 40 x 20 cm with parchment paper.

Coarsely chop the chocolate and melt it together with the butter in a bain marie.
Gently whisk together sugar and eggs - you merely want it to blend, not go airy or light. Stir the chocolate/butter mixture into the egg/sugar mixture.
Sift flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa powder into the batter, gently mixing. If using, stir in the walnuts.

Pour into the prepared baking pan and bake for about 40 minutes. Leave to cool completely in the pan, before unmoulding. Cut into 20 squares.