Brownies

I havent blogged in ages, been so bogged down by work lately, and I am so tempted to shut down this blog and just blog at my main blog since the readership is so low anyway..but I shall perservere...hahah...so here's a long overdue post on my brownies..

I am crazy over brownies, like I am crazy over anything chocolate. But I have to admit that I am quite a snob when it comes to brownies. I love my brownies to be gooey and fudgy and chocolatey, instead of the dry cakey brownies sold in my places. Thus I am quite fussy about them, and seldom buy it outside unless I know for sure its a sure winner with me. Rich and good brownies are hard to come by, and nothing but the best would do.. Now, the brownie factory has some good stuff and a mind boggling variety, though I think there isnt a need for such variety, the best brownies are often plain old fashioned walnut fudge brownie. I think Famous Amos' super fudge brownies are also really good. And also coffee club's brownies a la mode, which comes in brownies smothered in choc sauce and vanilla ice-cream. NYDC's are also quite nice, though I suspect that minus the ice-cream and the chocolate fudge, it would actually be just normal. Oh, and did I mention mine too? hahah.

Brownies are really very easy to make. But there's the art of mastering how long to leave it in the oven, which I havent quite gotten. Its either overbaked or underbaked. But I have decided that its better to underbake than overbake. You know why? Cos when it comes out of the oven piping hot, there is nothing nicer than to savour the first piece of your hard work and when the soft oozy brownie just melts in your mouth, its nothing short of orgasmic, especially if you happen to have vanilla ice-cream at hand..In my case, it was rather on the soft and gooey and ugly side, but hey, no one was complaining, and it was gone within a day. So far, I have used different recipes for my brownies, and all were great. This time, I used a recipe from a food blogger called Orangette. Her description of the brownies made me want to try it ..here goes:

Ingredients:
1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2 sticks unsalted butter
4 ounces best-quality unsweetened chocolate,chopped
2ounces best-quality bittersweet chocolate,chopped
cups granulated sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs
1 cup toasted walnuts

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit
2. Whisk together flour and salt, set aside
3.Melt butter and chocolate together(microwave or use a saucepan like I did and use low heat). When the mixture is melted and smooth, add 1 cup of sugar, stir until melted and remove from heat. Add vanilla extract and pour mixture into large bowl.
4.Put remaining sugar and egg into a bowl and whisk by hand. Pour half of it into chocolate mixture, little by little, stirring gently with rubber spatula. Beat remaining sugar and egg mixture on medium speed(with electric mixer if you are lazy like me) until they are thick, pale and doubled in volume and fold it into the chocolate mixture gently. When it is incoporated, fold in the remaining dry ingredients.
5.Pour batter into 8 inch square pan. Bake for 30-35 mins(the original recipe called for a shorter time) or until toothpick stuck in the middle comes out without gooey batter sticking to it. It would also be cracked at the top and tender in the middle. Again, I emphasize to avoid overbaking.
6. Cool in a rack, and cut into rectangular pieces.

The original recipe called for 25mins baking time. When I cut it, it was still too soft, so I threw it back into the oven for another 5mins. It came out, still soft, thus it was very hard to cut it even after cooling it. I decided to dumped everything into a paper cup, and thus it looks so ugly. I found a good way to salvage it was to refrigerate it, cos it became like fudge more than brownies. They were really delicious, dark, chocolatey and fudgy and not too sweet....the recipe is definitely a keeper, though I have to bake it longer next time...