Sunday, December 2, 2012

Tsensational Brownies

Let's bake.

Tsensational Fudgy Brownies.

142g 70% dark chocolate
1.5 Tbsp cocoa (Dutch for dark choco flavor, Natural for milk choco)
240g maximum total sugar (sugar in chocolate + granulated or castor's sugar)
115g butter (you can get away with approx. 95g)
1 tsp vanilla xtract
1 tsp insta-espresso (gives more complex flavor, but not required)
1/3 tsp salt
2 eggs
60g flour

- This is a small batch for approx. 9" x 6"
- Tweak ingredient amounts to suit your preferred texture, taste, and sweetness level.
- Use the best chocolate and cocoa you can reasonably get.  I used Scharffen Berger chocolate and Penzeys Dutch processed cocoa for this batch.


Mise en place.  You know the drill:
1. Melt choco w/ butter.
2. Beat eggs with sugar until pale and fluffy. The more you dissolve the sugar and work the whites, the better crust you will get.  This is key to achieving the paper-thin shiny crust.
3. Sift flour w/ cocoa and salt.
4. Choco/butter should be cool enough by now to dump in w/ eggs.  Do it.
5. Mix in flour mixture in parts.  Or just throw all of it in, whatever.  Just make sure you don't have lumps.
6. Fold extras into batter as you see fit: choco chips, nuts, PB swirl, etc.
7. Oven behavior varies.  For my shitty little oven, 24min @ 345F gives me the results I want.  You'll have to figure best baking time on your own, sorry.
8. Let cool and devour.  Sharing is for chumps.

Please note that this is for fudgy brownies.  For cakey brownies, you'll have to increase the amount of flour.  For chewy brownies, increase sugar and/or use a higher protein flour (eg. bread flour).


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