My Problem With Brownies
Sundays chez moi are reserved for three things: Laundry, housekeeping, and cooking. I get these three things done and it will last me a week or more; I don’t, and I start scrambling around Wednesday. So my Sunday cooking usually consists of a huge pot of spaghetti sauce or pumpkin soup plus something sweet. Culinarily I’m not very adventurous (I don’t have the touch), but I do like to try new things occasionally.
Recently I’ve been on a brownie high, primarily because for the life of me I couldn’t the recipe right. I added more flour. I added less. I added the chocolate mixture warm; I added it cold. I fussed with the baking time and the cocoa powder, I tried brown and white and caster sugar – I tried EVERYTHING. To no avail. Every single time my brownies came out hard as rocks, and the last time I swear I almost cried.
Then a miracle happened.
I baked one Sunday, took it out, put it back a few hours later in the cold oven, and totally forgot about it until Wednesday. Then I took it out, cut it into its customary bite-sized cubes, tried one – and it melted in my mouth. I tried another; I nearly died of happiness. These brownies are damn good. (Canadians who live near a Loblaws: You know those Farmer’s Market Two-Bite Brownies? Yeah. Like those, but better because they’re homemade, they’re fresh, and they don’t make you feel guilty. Terribly.)
So obviously the secret to these brownies is longevity. The longer I left them, the better they tasted. Can any bakers out there confirm?
And just to share, here’s the recipe. It yields denser, chewy, almost fudge-like brownies (my favourite kind), instead of the floury, cakey kind (which taste like chocolate cakes masquerading as wannabe brownies):
Brownies
- Preheat to 160 C. Line a tin (roughly 8″ x 10″) with baking paper.
- Melt 250 g butter (chopped) and 200 g dark chocolate (I use cooking chips) over low heat in a pot until smooth.
- Meanwhile, beat until fluffy wet ingredients (4 eggs, 1 3/4 c. brown sugar) and mix dry ingredients (1 1/4 c. regular flour, 1/3 c. cocoa powder, 1/4 tsp. baking powder). The actual recipe says to sift the dry ingredients, but since I don’t have a sifter I cheat and give it a good whisk; seems to work.
- Add dry mixture to wet mixture gradually until just combined.
- Add melted chocolate mixture (cooled slightly) to above until just combined. Pour into baking tin.
- Bake until set (usually around 50 min). If you poke a knife in it, it should come out with moist crumbs stuck to it (unlike muffins, cakes, and more floury things).
- Leave for 2+ days. The longer the better. Otherwise you’ll be masticating brownie bricks.
Enjoy!
– Jean AAR
Blythe, maybe I have overcooked my brownies. It took me awhile to figure out, but that was definitely my problem with cookies. It seems that if they look done when you take them out, they suddenly harden up and are overdone.
The recipe says 50 minutes or until set, and I tried varying that too. I think these particular brownies happen to use a lot of chocolate (or so it seems), so it makes it naturally dense. But that’s a guess. Next time I make them I’ll play around some more.
Don’t they just come out rock hard because you cook them too long? Or am I missing something? My favorite recipe is the one on the back of Baker’s Chocolate…it’s the one bowl brownies. I am a huge cookie/brownie snob and would never use a mix of any sort. Definitely fudgey and not rock hard (unless you cook them too long. In my experience, nearly everyone cooks both brownies and cookies too long).
I’ve only made mixes too but not for a couple of years. Ghiradelli or Hershey’s always worked for me. They came out chocolately and yummy.
This is really interesting, Jean. I’ll have to admit that in recent years i haven’t made brownies, except from a mix, because mine come out rock hard as well. But chewy is exactly how I like them. So, I may be forced to try your recipe….once it cools off a bit outside.