Brownie Battle

You might remember that I've had some brownie blunders in the past. In fact, I've just never had fantastic luck with bars, in general. My edges come out crisp and delicious, but my centers are almost always undercooked. (And please don't recommend that stupid "all edges" pan ... unlike most people, I think the middle brownies are the best!)

After my biggest brownie fail, my BFF saved the day with a pretty decent recipe. Her fudgy brownies were amazing, but I still felt like we hadn't quite achieved perfection. Then Bill decided to make brownies on Valentine's Day. I wished him luck and explained my brownie blues. And he proceeded to make some of the most delicious, thick and fudgy brownies I'd ever tasted. Needless to say, I was pissed. This called for a brownie bake-off.

My original intent was to use the same recipe he did, confident that I could make them better. Well, when the day came for me to bake my brownies, I was short an egg. So I had to improvise. He'd used an America's Test Kitchen recipe, so I figured it would be easy enough to locate a similar one (that hopefully called for 2 eggs instead of 3!). Instead, I came across a Quicker Turtle Brownie recipe in a past issue of Cook's Country which looked nothing like Bill's recipe. Since I was going to have to improvise anyway, I may as well start from scratch.

Following the general steps of their recipe, I concocted the one below. It has significantly less chocolate, butter, and sugar than Bill's recipe, and it's a bit more cakey than fudgy. But the one complaint I heard about Bill's brownies was that they were SO dense and rich. So I think mine struck just the right balance!

While we didn't compare them side-by-side because they were a baked a couple weeks apart (which explains why I don't have a picture of Bill's version), the memory was fresh. I don't think he's actually admitted it yet, but I definitely think that my recipe takes the cake ... which makes up for that pumpkin pie throwdown that I lost.

My "Quicker, Basic" Brownies
Ingredients:
1 cup cake flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
3 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

Directions:
Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 325 degrees. Line 8-inch square baking pan with foil. Spray foil with cooking spray.

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. In another bowl, microwave butter and chocolate, stirring occasionally until smooth, about 1 minute. Whisk sugar, eggs, and vanilla into chocolate mixture. Add flour mixture in 3 additions, mixing until combined. Scrape batter into prepared pan and spread into an even layer. Bake until toothpick inserted in center comes out with just a few crumbs attached, about 40 to 50 minutes.

Do your best to let them cool completely before slicing and serving :)


Bill's "Chewy, Fudgy" Brownies
Ingredients:
5 oz. semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
8 tablespoons butter, cut into 4 pieces
3 tablespoons cocoa
3 eggs
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup flour

Directions:
Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 8-inch baking pan with foil. Spray foil with cooking spray.

In a medium bowl set over a pan of almost-simmering water, melt chocolates and butter, stirring occasionally until mixture is smooth. Whisk in cocoa until smooth. Set aside and allow to cool slightly.

Whisk together eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt in a medium bowl. Whisk chocolate mixture into egg mixture. Stir in flour with wooden spoon until just combined. Scrape batter into prepared pan, spread into corners, and smooth surface with a spatula. Bake until slightly puffed and toothpick inserted in center comes out with a few sticky crumbs attached, 35 to 40 minutes.

Let cool, remove from pan, and slice just before serving.

I Wanna Rocky Road All Night!

Bill and I joined a bunch of my co-workers at the Brewers game last night. And for our tailgate, I (naturally) volunteered to provide dessert. I thought about making baseball cake balls, but just wasn't up for all the work. So instead, I gave Bill a choice of cookies or bars. He chose bars, so I broke out my 9x13: The Pan That Can cookbook.

I haven't had great success with this cookbook (in fact, it's where I found my failure espresso brownies), but it has such a huge bar selection that I decided to give it another shot. When I saw these Rocky Road Brownies, they sounded too good not to try! So with great trepidation, I got to work.

I've concluded that I really need to research the perfect brownie recipe because it must require great balance in ingredients. When I've tried baking dense brownies, I've never gotten them to set. Nicole sent me her favorite recipe, and they were more like fudge. I've tried to find the right recipe for cake brownies, and haven't come across it. These are probably technically classified as cake brownies, but they were way more cake than brownie. Still seriously delicious, but just not the perfect brownie balance.

I actually think this rocky road topping would be a-ma-zing on top of Nicole's Fan-fudgin'-tastic Brownies! Somebody try it and let me know how it goes!

Rocky Road Brownies
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter
1 cup water
1/3 cup cocoa powder
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup nuts (The recipe called for peanuts. I used almonds because I had them on hand, but I would have preferred walnuts!)
3 cups marshmallows (They're supposed to be tiny marshmallows, but I only had jumbo so I chopped them.)
1 recipe Chocolate Drizzle (recipe follows)

Directions:
Line a 9x13-inch baking dish with foil, extending the foil over the edges. Grease the foil. Set dish aside. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt. Set aside. In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, combine the butter, water and cocoa powder. Heat until just boiling, stirring almost constantly. Remove from heat immediately. Add the chocolate mixture to the flour mixture. Beat with an electric mixer on medium speed until well-combined. Add eggs, buttermilk (see below for a tip if you don't have buttermilk on hand) and vanilla. Beat for 1 minute more (batter will be thin ... which should have been my clue they'd be like cake). Spread batter evenly in prepared dish.

Bake 35 to 40 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center (or in about a dozen various other spots, if you're brownie-paranoid like I am) comes out clean.

Remove from oven and immedaitely sprinkle marshmallows and nuts over top of brownies. (I also added a handful of white chocolate chips for good measure!) Drizzle chocolate drizzle over the top. Cool completely on wire rack. Cut into bars (see below for a tip on cutting gooey brownies).

Chocolate Drizzle
Ingredients:
6 oz. semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons butter

Directions:
Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan. Heat over very low heat, stirring constantly, until smooth.

Note: This Chocolate Drizzle recipe makes way more drizzle than you need for these brownies ... but it turns out the leftovers are an amazing fondue! And Chocolate Fondue just so happened to be on my recipe wishlist, so I ended up crossing it off without even meaning to! I wish I'd had strawberries on hand for dipping, but instead I used graham crackers. Oh so good!

Jen's Kitchen Clues
Making Buttermilk
In the past when a recipe called for buttermilk, I'd shrug my shoulders and just use milk, figuring it didn't make a huge difference. It wasn't until I actually bought buttermilk and used it in my favorite banana bread (as the recipe had called for all along) that I discovered how much of a difference it can make! Now, if I don't have it on hand and a recipe calls for it, I don't have to worry:

To make a 1/2 cup of buttermilk, place 1 1/2 teaspoons of white vinegar in a measuring cup and add milk to reach the 1/2 cup line. Stir and let sit for 5 minutes before using. Easy!

Slicing Brownies
Slicing brownies can be tricky when they're sticky, as these were because of the marshmallows on top! To slice them cleanly (and keep from pulling the topping off), just spray a serrated knife with a little cooking spray on both sides. It's typically tasteless, and will slide right through gooey stuff like marshmallows. I even did this to chop the jumbo marshmallows I used into smaller pieces.

Fan-fudgin'-tastic Brownies

By BFF Nicole saved the day with a brownie recipe I actually succeeded at after last weekend's huge brownie fail. If you compare the two, they are very different recipes. But I think the key is that these use cocoa powder over actual chocolate, which could have contributed to my brownies' inability to set. These are also much fudgy-er, less cake-y brownies (as you can see by the small amount of flour the recipe calls for). They ended up dense, rich and delicious!

These are definitely a remake, but I'm not completely satisified .. I'm still determined to mast a cake-y brownie. So the testing will continue!

Fudgy Cocoa Brownies
Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8x8-inch baking pan; set aside.

Melt butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Off the heat, stir in cocoa. Pour butter-cocoa mixture into medium mixing bowl and stir in sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating with a hand mixer after each addition. Add vanilla, flour and salt. Beat until just combined. Do not overbeat!

Pour brownie batter into prepared baking dish and bake 25 to 30 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool and serve.


Now I have to admit, I was super paranoid about getting the bake time right because I was afraid of ending up with gooey middles and charred edges. After 22 minutes in the oven, they weren't set so I put them back in for 3 minutes. After 25 minutes, they might have been set, but I was still worried so I put them back in for 2 minutes. At 27 minutes, my edges were a little browner than I would have liked, but the centers seemed about perfect. In retrospect, I probably should have taken them out at 25 minutes to avoid the crispy edges ... but if you like that sort of thing, maybe 27 minutes will be right for you!

What Went Wrong with My Brownies?

Every so often, I have a kitchen disaster that really makes me mad. And when that disaster is baking related, it's even worse (hello, Dough-Nots!). Well last night wasn't a good one, because for the first time in a long time, I had a great big baking FAIL.

Bill asked me to bake something for him last night, and of course I was excited to do so. I haven't done a ton of baking over the last couple weeks and there are lots of recipes I wanted to try, one being espresso brownies. Unofrtunately, they didn't go as planned.

After 27 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees, I took them out, inserted a toothpick in the middle, shook the pan to double-check that they were set, and allowed them to cool. When I lifted the foil out of the pan and cut off a corner to taste them, they were still gooey inside. (And not yummy, chocolate-y gooey, just super undercooked gooey.) Thinking I could save them, I turned the oven back on and put them back in. It took almost 20 minutes, with periodic checking, before they seemed to be cooked all the way through and I took them out again.

When they cooled and I tried to serve them, the edges (at least the ones that hadn't burnt) were delicious. But the center still wasn't completely cooked through! The only thing I can imagine went wrong is that I used I Can't Believe It's Not Butter sticks for baking instead of real butter. But I often use I Can't Believe It's Not Butter for baking, and I've never had a problem like this.

If, after looking at the recipe, you have any idea where I might have gone wrong, please, please let me know. Or if you also think it was the butter, maybe I'll just have to try them again (with real butter this time!). This is the second batch of brownies I've ruined (the last was almost a year ago and it was so traumatic that I hadn't attempted brownies since!). I refuse to fail at them again. What good am I if I don't have basic brownies in my repertoire?!

Espresso Brownies
Ingredients:
1 cup butter, cut into pieces
6 oz. unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
2 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup instant espresso powder
1/4 cup coffee liqueur
2 teaspoons vanilla

Directions:
Line a 9x13-inch baking pan with foil, extending foil over the edges of the pan. Grease foil and set aside. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a small saucepan, combine butter and chocolate. Cook and stir over low heat until melted. Cool to room temperature.

Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. In a alrge bowl, combine eggs, sugar, espresso powder, coffee liqueur, and vanilla. Beat with an electric mixer on medium speed until combined. Beat in cooled chocolate mixture. Add flour mixture, stirring just until combined. Spread batter evenly in prepared pan.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until top appears set and dry. Cool in pan on a wire rack. Using the edges of the foil, lift brownies out of pan. Cut into bars and serve.