Of Cocoa Brownie

My mom had always insisted that using cocoa was better for making brownies than my usual melted chocolate. When my mom insists on something, you follow. So I looked up a brownie recipe that used cocoa powder instead of chocolate. I found this recipe from Smitten Kitchen. I tweaked it a little by using muscovado sugar instead of white sugar and reducing the amount to one cup only instead of 1 1/4 cups. The result? A more adult and less sugary brownie. It still retained its fudginess, but its chocolate flavor seemed to intensify.

Cocoa Brownie

10 tablespoons butter

1 cup muscovado sugar

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 large eggs, cold

1/2 cup all purpose flour

2/3 cup nuts, like pecans or walnut or cashews (optional, I didn't put any)

Preheat the oven to 325F or 160C. In a heat-proof bowl, add the butter, sugar, cocoa powder and vanilla extract. Place the bowl over a pot of barely simmering water. Stir until the butter has melted and the mixture is hot enough such that you instinctively remove your finger after testing it (I thought that was a funny way of putting it, but yes, it's in the recipe). 

Remove from the heat and set aside to cool a bit. The mixture should be warm and not hot. Stir in the vanilla extract. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring vigorously after each addition. Once it's well-blended, shift in the flour. Stir until well-blended. At this point, you can add the nuts if you want. Stir again, if you do. 

Finally, pour the batter into a prepared 8x8 inch pan. Make sure to use parchment paper or foil as this will help in removing the brownies from the pan. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Once done, let the brownie cool completely before cutting. I suggest refrigerating for about an hour first before cutting. Finally cut into tiny squares and serve!

Of Butterless Brownies

Have you ever wanted to bake or cook something and not have the ingredients for it? It has happened to me so many times that I've lost count. Today was one of those days. I wanted to bake something, but I didn't have butter, and that made baking difficult. Instead of simply going to the neighborhood store to get more butter, I decided that I should just get a recipe with no butter. That's were the trusty Googler came in. A quick search in Google yielded tons of butterless recipes. There was just one problem: most of them were also milkless and eggless, and that just sounded too sketchy for me. Egg substitute gives me the hibby gibbies. 

Lucky for me, I came upon this butterless brownie recipe. It called for extra virgin olive oil instead of butter and you used actual eggs too. It also had rolled oats, and in the original recipe, roasted almonds. I also didn't have those, so I simply left the almonds out and instead, replaced it with extra chocolate chips and a drizzle of Nutella. (I'm telling you, I adore that stuff) The result: perfect brownies with just one drawback: you'll have a hard time keeping away from these long enough for them to set well.

You will need:

100g melted chocolate (dark or in my case, semi-sweet)

1/3 cup Extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup flour

1/4 cup rolled oats

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 sea salt

2 eggs at room temperature

2/3 granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Chocolate chips (or nuts if you want)

Nutella, softened

First step is to preheat your oven to 175C or 347F. Then prepare your 8x8 baking pan by lining it with a lightly greased parchment paper. Whisk the melted chocolate with the olive oil in a bowl. In another bowl, mix together the flour, oats, baking powder and salt. In a larger bowl, beat the eggs and the sugar together until the mixture becomes pale and thickened. Fold in the dry ingredients, then the chocolate and oil mixture in too. Finally, add in the vanilla extract. Once everything has just come together, pour into your prepared pan. Sprinkle the top with extra chocolate chips and drizzle with Nutella. My best advice at this step is to go big. Don't scrimp (unlike me). Drizzle as much Nutella and chocolate chips and nuts as you want. Then place the pan in the oven and bake for 22-26 minutes or until the top is dry and a tooth pick comes out clean when you prick it.

PS. I adapted this recipe from:
http://www.passionateaboutbaking.com/2009/07/olive-oil-brownies-with-roasted-almonds-mmmmm-delicious.html
And yes, I loved these brownies. I watched them disappear before my eyes my my dad's coworker's kids gobbled them all up.

Of Brownies

Look how moist that brownie is, yet it has that nice crispy top.

I've been thing of brownies for a while now. I've put off baking them mostly because I ran out of eggs. Sad, but true. When I finally got eggs, I started looking for the perfect brownie recipe. One that was not too gooey and not too dry. Then I came across this recipe from the joyofbaking.com. It's called Katherin Hepburn's Brownies, because according to the author, Katherin Hepburn gave this recipe to a gossip columnist who published it in her column. Not sure if this is true or not, but I am extremely glad someone decided to publish this recipe. It's easy and everything is done in one bowl. 

2 ounces (60 grams) unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped

1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 cup (200 grams) granulated white sugar

2 eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup (30 grams) all purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup (100 grams) chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

Preheat the oven to 165C or 325F. Melt the chocolate and the butter in a large bowl over simmering water. Once melted, remove from heat and stir in sugar. Add vanilla and eggs. Stir, then add flour and salt. Add nuts too if you're using them.
Pour into a greased pan and bake for 30-35minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool and enjoy the beautiful scent this brownie has. Don't forget to cut into squares and serve.

Read more:http://joyofbaking.com/katharinehepburnbrownies.html#ixzz1XfayPug8

The one change I made was the chocolate. Instead of using 60g of chopped unsweetened chocolate, I used half a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips. I'm not sure if that's equivalent to 60g of chocolate, but the brownies still turned out great. I also reduced the sugar to 1/2 cup. I couldn't bring myself to use a whole cup of sugar. I also did not use any nuts for now. 

See the crumbs!! Fishy loves!