The Best Brownie?

There has been much debate on the Foodlovers forums recently regarding brownie recipes. I thought it seemed only fair to try out at least one of the recipes. There's nothing like sacrificing your waistline for a good cause.

This recipe comes from Annabelle White's "Best Ever Baking and Slices" and purports to be that used in the renowned Pandoro bakery in Auckland.

100g Cocoa

200g Butter

400g (2 Cups) Caster (or superfine for those non-kiwis) Sugar

4 medium size Eggs

1 tsp Vanilla Essence

90g Plain Flour

1tsp baking powder

200g Dark (bittersweet/baking) Chocolate

Now, I made a slight error which I have only just realised as I am typing - good thing blogger won't let me cut and paste eh! The original recipe used chocolate chips which were added at the end, I used block chocolate which I melted and added. I'll just give you my method but if you wanted to do it without the mistake you would add the chocolate chips, unmelted, right at the end.

Method:

Preheat the oven to 150C, use a static (no fan) function, position your shelf to the middle of the oven. Line a 20x30cm tin with baking paper - I used an old aluminium roasting dish.

Melt butter and sugar. Sift all siftable ingredients into a bowl, add remaining dry ingredients. Add liquid ingredients and mix. Turn into tin, level off and bake for approx and hour - set your timer for about 40 minutes and check every 5 minutes from there - you don't want it overcooked. It should still feel slightly undercooked - e.g. give under your fingers when pressed - when you pull it out. When completely cooled cut into SMALL portions.

This brownie is very rich - probably more so when you melt all the chocolate and mix it in! Also I used 70% cocoa solids chocolate. In hindsight I would recommend a standard 50% baking chocolate.

In terms of chocolate for cooking, there is a certain danger involved with keeping chocolate in the house for cooking. To attempt to circumvent this I store all my cooking chocolate in the freezer - firstly it's not somewhere you usually look when you are snack prowling and secondly, if you do actually want to eat it you really do need to let it warm up to room temperature for it to be even slightly enjoyable and to avoid breaking your teeth. Yes I have tried and you only do it once. Ok maybe twice.

In terms of buying chocolate for baking I advocate for buying reasonable quality but not over the top and for generally buying eating chocolate over baking chocolate because it is generally cheaper. I used to be the chocolate technologist for the biggest chocolate manufacturer in NZ (and no that fiasco wasn't really anything to do with me) and the reason that the eating chocolate is cheaper is that the companies sell a lot more of it so it is cheaper for them to make and market and more worthwhile to sell.

I have some opinions when it comes to very high end expensive imported chocolate. Don't bother using it for cooking. When you are cooking you will cook off most of the finer, more interesting flavours - it's a bit like the difference between a wine you might eat and one you might cook with - you want a cooking wine to be palatable but there is no need to go putting a $50 bottle unless you are rather pretentious or have cash to burn. At least in my not so humble opinion. Getting down off my soapbox now.

So, the all important question - how was the brownie? Pretty damn good, I'd make it again. It was almost verging on being too rich - I know, I never imagined that I would say it either. Definitely a good one to serve with ice cream or cream just to cut back the mouth gluing fudginess a little.

I'd be tempted to freeze a couple of pieces in a bag and to use in case of an emergency dinner party. This of course assumes that you have enough left over to freeze and you have the willpower to leave it in the freezer. Let's just say there is no brownie in my freezer.