Saturday 18 May 2019

BraveTart Brownies

I saw these gorgeous brownies on Reddit a while back, and saved the link because I thought I absolutely had to try baking them. It's certainly not the first time I've tried doing brownies, but they have seemed a bit of a weak spot in my baking repertoire, and previous attempts have had a pretty mixed success rate. I also don't yet have a go-to recipe, so I've got my fingers crossed that these turn out like the ones that inspired me!

The recipe is the BraveTart recipe on Serious Eats. The only changes I made were to omit the instant coffee and to add an extra egg as the eggs I had to hand were relatively small.

Brave Tart Brownies
Ingredients
  • 340g Unsalted butter
  • 170g Dark chocolate chips
  • 450g Caster sugar
  • 55g Soft brown sugar
  • 4g Salt
  • 7 Eggs
  • 1tbsp Vanilla extract
  • 125g Plain flour
  • 115g Cocoa powder
Method
  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over a low heat. Once melted, brown the butter by simmering over a medium heat, stirring continuously, until the hissing stops.*
  2. Remove from the heat and stir in the chocolate.
  3. Mix the sugar (both types), salt, eggs and vanilla in a stand mixer on a medium-high setting for ~8 minutes until very thick and fluffy.
  4. Turn the stand mixer down to low and pour in the chocolate/butter mixture.
  5. Sift the flour and cocoa powder together. Add to the mixer in one go, then finish the mixing by hand with a spatula.
  6. Pour the batter into foil-lined pans and bake at 180C for ~30 mins until barely firm.
  7. Allow to cool in the tin before cutting and removing.
*The butter foamed up and tried to escape the pan much like pasta water does - this was when I decided that the butter was browned enough!

Check out this action shot! This is the finished batter (and it smells amazing!).

Ready for the oven. There's quite a lot of brownie...

Pretty gorgeous straight out of the oven. Lovely glossy top.