Anna invited S and me for coffee today and asked me to bring something. At first I was planning to go there empty-handed, as Anna always has plenty of super good food ready, but a couple of hours before coffee time I started to feel bad about it and began looking for a quick and simple recipe.
I started dieting again a few days ago. For me dieting means cooking every day, so that I know what I eat, and baking is not supposed to come into it at all. At the same time I have been craving to bake something chocolatey and preferably gooey, and with these simple preconditions chocolate brownies were an easy choice. Unfortunately the recipe I chose has so many calories that I didn't even dare to calculate them per serving. Probably pretty close to a Big Mac.
Stephanie Jaworski's Joyofbaking.com has been a good source of baking recipes for me, and it is where I once found my chocolate génoise too. After a quick comparison between her brownie recipe and Nigella's (her book is in the picture below) I decided to go with Stephanie's, only because her recipe called for double the amount of chocolate.
In the picture Nigella's book is open at her brownies, which have birthday candles burning on top. In front of it is what was meant to go into mine, bars of 70 per cent dark chocolate, Fazer among them, and white chocolate buttons and hazelnuts.
I read somewhere that the brownies in Fannie Farmer's cookbook of 1896 had molasses in them and a nut in the middle, but no chocolate at all. This recipe, on the other hand, calls for A LOT of chocolate. Each finished brownie square contains about 45 grams (1 2/3 oz) of it, plus tons of butter and sugar. Perfect comfort food, but super bad for the belly. I highly discourage you from trying this recipe 😉
I melt the chocolate and butter over a pot of boiling water, because chocolate burns easily over direct heat. The eggs and sugar, on the other hand, are worth beating properly. I have read that the thin, shiny crust on a good brownie is actually meringue, which forms when the sugar has dissolved in the eggs. Mine got that crust, as you can see in the last picture. There is so much batter that it takes a whole lasagna pan lined with parchment.
I made a grand mistake with my batch, though. I forgot to fold the hazelnuts and white chocolate chips into the batter. I had even toasted the nuts in a pan beforehand, and there they sat in their bowl next to the white chocolate. I realised it the minute I put the cake into the oven, but was too bummed to take it out and try to mix them in. The good thing is that now I have a bona fide reason to bake another cake!
Recipe card
Chocolate Brownies
- Serves 16
- Oven 175 °C (347 °F)
- Baking 45 minutes
You will need
| 650 g (23 oz) | 70% chocolate, e.g. Fazer Premium Block 70% |
| 225 g (8 oz) | unsalted butter |
| 6 | free-range eggs, at room temperature |
| 500 g (18 oz) | granulated sugar |
| 1 tbsp | vanilla extract |
| 210 g (1.5 cups) | all-purpose flour |
| 1 tsp | baking powder |
| 1/4 tsp | salt |
| 100 g (3.5 oz) | hazelnuts, coarsely crushed |
| 100 g (3.5 oz) | white chocolate chips |
Method
- Preheat the oven to 175 °C (347 °F). Line a lasagna pan with parchment paper.
- Melt the chocolate and butter in a pot sitting in a bigger pot of boiling water. You can speed this up by melting the butter in a microwave first. Mix the butter and chocolate to a smooth paste and set aside.
- Mix the flour, baking powder and salt together.
- Crush the hazelnuts coarsely and toast them in a pan for a couple of minutes until fragrant.
- Cream the eggs and sugar until very light, 5-10 minutes. Add the vanilla extract and fold in the butter and chocolate mixture. Fold in the flour mixture, and then the hazelnuts and white chocolate chips.
- Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 45 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean from the centre of the cake.
