By the time I got home at 11 p.m., I decided I was going to end the night by baking brownies, my dessert item for this week. Seemed appropriate to end the night with the typically last meal of the day. (Typically for whom, I can't definitively say.)
The first step was preheating my oven, and mixing very dark chocolate with butter while I waited. The recipe, from Mark Bittman's cookbook How to Cook Everything Basics, called for unsweetened chocolate. I couldn't find any, and figured the bitterness from the darkest chocolate I could find (85% cacao, I believe), would have a similar effect. I swirled it together over low heat with a whole stick of butter (a very small, chubby stick that swears its a whole 8 tablespoons) over low heat. When it melted, it had lovely, brilliant shine, like an edible chocolate lacquer.
A lot of my stuff is still in boxes, and to my surprise realized that I misplaced the (apparently) one mixing bowl I own at my old house. Not sure exactly where in the old house, and not willing to drive 30+ minutes in the middle of the night to go look, I decided to use a tupperware bowl to mix my ingredients. (In my hurry to bake something, I forgot to take pictures until the very end.) Into the tupperware went this lovely shiny butter-chocolate mix, then sugar (which immediately had a seized, crystallized effect that smoothed out gorgeously), then 2 eggs, one at a time. The eggs really lightened up the mixture and took it from that cacao dark color to a more familiar milk chocolate color, and thickened it up some as well. The real thickening came with the flour, and salt and vanilla extract rounded the ingredients out.
Once the flour and adjacent ingredients were added, I was left with this beautiful, fudgy batter. I tasted after every ingredient addition, and this final, pre-bake stage was promising. I used a rubber spatula to pour the batter into a pre-buttered baking square (as you do), and popped it into the oven for 20 minutes.
The house smelled lovely, which is one of the true joys of baking, the free, cozy scents. After passing the clean knife test, Boyfriend and I let them cool for 10-15ish minutes. They were still warm slightly when we cut into them, but they cut perfectly. They didn't stick to the pan. I've made this recipe in the past, and often, they had turned out stuck to the pan and falling apart, to my disappointment. Apparently, the pro tip is to be generous with the butter in the "grease the pan" stage. Like, hella generous. Go crazy.
I noticed immediately that these brownies were somewhat flat. They didn't have a ton of rise. They did have a nice color and crust with a denser, more moist interior. If you look at the cross section, the exterior is a lighter brown while the inside was dark and chewy. The texture turned out delightful, moist and flavorful, but not nearly as fudgy as the initial batter alluded to. Also, the very dark cacao lingered, and while tempered by the baking ingredients, still left a chalky bitterness. Perhaps going down to 70% would end up with a more balanced brownie.
These turned out delightful, and I'm happy to have them around for a quick thing to snack on (having a second one as I finish up this post). They pair amazingly with a cold glass of milk.
3 oz 85% cacao dark chocolate: $3.75
1 stick unsalted butter: 87 cents
1 cup cane sugar: 41 cents
2 eggs: 50 cents
1/2 cup flour: 17 cents
Total: $5.70 for 9 brownies (63 cents each)
The recipe also includes a pinch of salt and a half teaspoon of vanilla extract. I was gifted some salt and extract, so I couldn't accurately include the costs of each. But, these are generally common ingredients in most people's pantries. I'm confident that the combined cost for those two ingredients is less than 75 cents, still keeping our grand total under $7.
These brownies are definitely tasty and comforting in a familiar way. They don't take long to make, taste good and are easy to eat. Gotta love it.
This is the 1st recipe I've blogged from HTCEB.
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