Brownie Help

FUDGY OR CAKEY? You make the call on which type of brownies to make. These are swirled with caramel. FUDGY OR CAKEY? You make the call on which type of brownies to make. These are swirled with caramel.
If you think you can't bake, brownies are for you.
"They're one of the easiest things to make," says Jessica Gaya, owner of Corina Bakery in Tacoma, Wash. "The best way to mess them up is overbaking. Other than that, brownies are really easy."
Indeed. Take a few pantry ingredients, a couple of bowls, a whisk, a spatula, a pan and an oven set to 325 F. Within an hour, you're staring at delicious baked chocolate.

Do you crave fudgy or cakey?

Do you like bittersweet or semisweet chocolate?

Dutch alkalized or natural unsweetened cocoa powder?

With or without nuts?

What about icing?
Brownie bakers willing to consider the important questions, read on.
Get cakey
If you want light, airy brownies with cakey, buttery richness, here's the skinny:
Cakey brownies have more flour. Flour gives them structure. They don't fall after baking. They stand up to icing.
They have less solid chocolate, sometimes even no solid chocolate. They include cocoa powder and more sugar. Cakey brownies that have high sugar content get a crustier surface as granulated sugar replaces solid chocolate's ultrafine sugar particles, which melt smoothly and soften the batter. Larger grains on the batter surface crystallize and caramelize.
They have more butter. Extra butter compensates for the small amount of fat in cocoa powder. Since butter melts faster than cocoa butter, brownies whose butter content outweighs the amount of cocoa fat will bake soft.
They're mixed by first creaming butter, eggs and sugar. They're often mixed with an electric mixer but can be mixed by hand.
Recipes sometimes include milk.


Get fudgy
If you crave dense and decadent brownies, there's no way to fudge fudgy.
Melt a lot of chocolate. Even a small batch can call for a pound or more.
Choose a recipe that has less flour. It's no coincidence that fudgy brownies have a lot in common with flourless chocolate decadence cake.
Mix by hand. Whisking a minimal amount of air into the eggs reduces their leavening power. Gently stirring in the flour prevents tough batter. If your brownie crust separates when the cooled brownie collapses, you've overmixed.
Keep your cool, and underbake. A lower oven temperature (325 F) helps fudgy batters bake smoothly. Remove brownies from the oven just before the center sets.


Chocolate choices
You can use almost any chocolate – bittersweet, semisweet or milk chocolate. There are many excellent chocolates: Scharffen Berger, Guittard, Ghirardelli. Callebaut, Lindt and Valrhona are available if not affordable.
Humble brownies don't necessarily need fancy chocolate. Supermarket baking squares produce good results.
While you can use bittersweet in place of semisweet or vice versa, not all chocolates are interchangeable. Some of today's premium bittersweet and semisweet chocolates contain 35 to 70 percent chocolate liquor, the remainder is sugar. Different percentage chocolates behave differently. Substitute with anything that has more than 62 percent chocolate, and you'll need to do recipe math to adjust the sugar-to-chocolate ratio.
Mainstream brands contain about 55 percent chocolate liquor and produce the most reliable results. The higher the cacao percentage, the denser the brownies.


Powder your cocoa
Cocoa powder is dry, concentrated cocoa bean, the pod from which chocolate springs. Cocoa powder retains all of chocolate's flavor but almost none of its fat. Made with lower-quality beans, natural cocoa powder tends to be acidic and strong. Dutch-processed cocoa powder is alkalized to take the edge off. Dutch-process cocoa powder has a luscious dark red color but is less flavorful. While you can substitute Dutch-process cocoa powder for natural cocoa powder in most recipes, don't do it when the recipe has a lot of baking powder or soda, both of which react to acid.
Natural cocoa produces brownies with more flavor complexity and lots of tart, fruity notes. Because cocoa powder has less fat and sweetness than chocolate, the butter and sugar content in these brownies is pretty high. This produces a candylike crust and soft interior.


Panning for thick and thin
Brownies are commonly baked in a 9x14x2-inch pan that's known as a brownie pan. Eight-inch square pans also are popular. If you want thin brownies, use a larger, shallow pan. For small batches, I like to use a quarter-sheet pan measuring 91/2x13x1. For big batches, I like the half-sheet pan size, 18x13x1.
If you're using a dark nonstick pan, lower the oven temperature by 25 degrees. Brownies tend to bake with crusty edges, and dark nonstick pans turn up the heat.


Batter up
Some bakers swear you must cool melted chocolate before adding it to eggs lest you ruin the batch. Others swear that hot chocolate ensures crusty tops and chewy centers. When I worked as a morning baker, I made several trays of brownies each week. Sometimes, the chocolate cooled while I did other tasks. Sometimes, I tempered the chocolate into the eggs hot off the stove. It didn't seem to matter.


An easy way to add extra gooeyness and visual texture is to add a tortoiseshell-like appearance by swirling caramel onto the top of the unbaked batter in the pan. To ensure that the caramel doesn't melt away, use caramel that is fairly thick and completely cooled. The caramel can be mixed with thick jam or fruit compote for extra zing. Plop the cool caramel onto the batter. Drag the edge of a knife through the caramel and batter to create abstract lines.
If brownie batter is poured too thick, brownies won't bake properly in the centers. Combined with the slight underbaking needed for gooey brownies, you couldn't pass batter-heavy brownies to even the most zonked-out brownie eater. Don't spread the batter too thin; moisture and flavor will bake out quickly.


Another way to add texture and taste contrast is to stud the batter with chunks of chocolate. Fold in chocolate chunks in the final stages of mixing. Use bittersweet chunks with a semisweet batter. Sprinkle chocolate chunks on top, too.


CAKEY BROWNIES
10 tablespoons (11/4 sticks) unsalted butter
1 ¼ cups sugar
¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (natural or Dutch-process)
¼ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cold large eggs
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup walnut or pecan pieces (optional)
Position a rack in the lower third of the oven, and preheat the oven to 325 F.
Line the bottom and sides of the baking pan with parchment paper or foil, leaving an overhang on 2 opposite sides.
Combine the butter, sugar, cocoa and salt in a medium heatproof bowl, and set the bowl in a wide skillet of barely simmering water. Stir from time to time until the butter is melted and the mixture is smooth and hot enough that you want to remove your finger fairly quickly after dipping it in to test.
Remove the bowl from the skillet, and set aside briefly until the mixture is warm, not hot.
Stir in the vanilla with a wooden spoon. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring vigorously after each. When the batter looks thick, shiny and well-blended, add the flour and stir until you cannot see it any longer, then beat vigorously for 40 strokes with the wooden spoon or a rubber spatula. Stir in the nuts, if using. Spread evenly in the lined pan.
Bake until a toothpick plunged into the center emerges slightly moist with batter, 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool completely on a rack.
Lift the ends of the parchment or foil liner and transfer the brownies to a cutting board.
Makes 16 to 24 brownies.
PER SERVING: Calories 153 (57% fat) Fat 12 g (4 g sat) Cholesterol 33 mg Sodium 37 mg Fiber 1 g Carbohydrates 17 g Protein 2 g
SOURCE: Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate by Alice Medrich



FUDGY BROWNIES WITH CARAMEL
1 stick (8 tablespoons) butter
1/4 cup cream
1 ½ pounds semisweet chocolate
3 eggs
1 ¼ cups sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 ¼ cups flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
5 ounces good-quality bittersweet chocolate bar, broken into ½ -inch chunks (divided use)
3 to 4 ounces store-bought caramel sauce

Preheat oven to 325 F. Lightly grease baking pan and set aside.
Melt butter, cream and chocolate in double boiler. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, sugar and vanilla.
Add a portion of the chocolate mixture to the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Add remaining chocolate and continue whisking.
Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk in the sifted dry ingredients in 2 increments. Whisk only until the flour is incorporated. Add half of the bittersweet chocolate chunks to the batter and mix.
Pour batter into the greased pan. Smooth the batter with a spatula. Sprinkle the remaining chocolate chunks on top.
Spoon globs of cold caramel sauce onto the brownie batter surface. Use the back of a knife to drag abstract patterns of caramel through the brownie batter.
Bake approximately 30-35 minutes, or until center is molten and not quite set.
Cool completely before cutting. Makes approximately 12 brownies.
Note: The recipe bakes best in a quarter-sheet pan measuring 9 ½ x13x1 inches. You also can use a 9x14x2-inch brownie pan or an 8x8 baking pan.
PER SERVING: Calories 590 (47% fat) Fat 33 g (19 g sat) Cholesterol 73 mg Sodium 164 mg Fiber 5 g Carbohydrates 78 g Protein 6 g


Enjoy the great review I found!
Chef Hannah