The Art of Brownies

After my happy success with the honey fudge, I decided to challenge myself by adapting a brownie recipe. I have a little cookbook called Cooking for Two and it has a nice little brownie recipe that only needs an 8x4 loaf pan. Sadly it's too cake-y and not chocolate-y enough for my tastes.

Then a few months back I was watching Chef at Home on the Food Network. The host (Michael Smith for anyone who doesn't know) has a very non-threatening approach to cooking that encourages the home chef to play with the recipes without fear of the kitchen crumbling down around them. It's great. So he starts talking about brownies and how there are different types and what makes them different. I search online hoping the clip is on youtube, but alas, it wasn't. So I look at the brownie recipe on his site, but it makes a huge 8x12 pan full. It's way too much for just the two of us but I make a mental note of how much flour he uses. Then I remember another great site. baking911.com I search on brownies there and get enough information to feel I can make an educated guess or two.

Back into the kitchen and my main recipe. I turn this baby on its head. I double the chocolate and reduce the flour from 1/3c to 1/4c. I tweak the mixing process by beating together the eggs and sugar and then temper them instead of just dumping everything into the chocolate. Finally, I lay down about half the batter and drop blobs of leftover raspberry pie filling on top before finishing with the rest of the brownie batter and then swirl the whole thing through.

Into the oven!

I think I added too much raspberry pie filling and it kept the centre from setting like it needed to. Consequently, the edges were a little bit overcooked and the brownies were a little messy with raspberry generously marbled throughout. They weren't very elegant and maybe not quite the thing to serve at a dinner party, but boy oh boy were they scrummy! I'll try it again (soon, hopefully) without the raspberry for just a plain, tasty fudgy brownie. It's so cool to have a recipe that I really made my own.