As of this writing (Thursday, 12/8), it’s National (or Chocolate) Brownie Day. Now this is a (fake) holiday I can get behind. I really like chocolate. No, really. I REALLY, REALLY like chocolate. I have my theories about why, but now is not the time to air them. Anyway, I like chocolate. I like brownies, too. Not as much as I like chocolate, but seeing as how this is CHOCOLATE brownie day (as opposed to blondies), it’s totally fine. So I celebrated tonight by making brownies. Huzzah!
I haven’t made brownies in a long time. I’ve traditionally only made box brownies. My sister and I have tried making brownies from scratch now and then, but they’ve never really turned out the way we thought brownies should. And see that making cookies is a bit faster than making brownies and they’re pre-portioned, we’ve typically just made cookies (a cookie recipe is forthcoming). But! Today is not Chocolate Cookie Day, it’s Chocolate Brownie Day. So I decided to try my hand at making brownies again.
One thing that’s always been a source of irritation to me about brownie recipes is that the overwhelming majority of brownie recipes I find involve cocoa powder. Sometimes I have it, but most of the time I don’t. But I almost always have semisweet chocolate chips on hand (and now I have A LOT of chocolate chips, but more on that later). Why can’t more recipes feature chocolate chips as a base? So here’s my stab at making brownies with chocolate chips as a base, rather than cocoa powder.
Dry components are measured in weight instead of volume, because using volume for dry goods is stupid. I firmly believe this. The only exceptions I made are for granulated sugar, table salt, and piddling small volumes. I like using metric for weights, because a base 10 system is a lot easier to work with than the weird Imperial but not really standard the US uses. If you don’t like it, then try going here for conversions.
Brownies
Materials:
- 0.25 c white sugar
- 28 g butter
- 2 tbsp coffee
- 260 g semisweet chocolate chips
- 2 eggs
- 0.5 tsp vanilla extract
- 84 g all-purpose flour
- 0.25 tsp baking soda
- 0.25 tsp salt
Procedure:
- Preheat the oven to 325 deg F.
- Grease an 8″x8″ square pan.
- Melt the sugar, butter, and coffee together over medium heat in a 2-quart saucepan.
- When the mixture starts to boil, remove it from the heat.
- Add the chocolate chips.
- Stir until smooth.
- Add the eggs and vanilla.
- Stir until incorporated.
- Add the dry ingredients.
- Stir until fully incorporated.
- Spread the batter evenly into the prepared pan.
- Bake for 25-30 minutes or until set.
Notes:
- Serves 12 if you have good judgment. If you don’t have good judgment, I guess you can just eat the whole thing yourself.
- This isn’t an extremely dense brownie. It’s more fudge-y than cake-y, but it’s not super dense.
- You could probably do everything in a 1-quart saucepan. I did it in a 3-quart saucepan and it was definitely overkill for the job.
- The batter is sticky, so I would recommend that you either grease your favorite spatula or use a silicone one.
- You could substitute water in for the coffee. Or you could sub in Bailey’s…if you’re into that stuff.
- Bring the eggs to room temperature before you use them. It’ll make it easier to incorporate into the chocolate mixture.
- You can leave out the salt if you want.
- Sifting your dry ingredients together before dumping it into the wet stuff would be best, but I rarely ever do that.
- Next time, I’ll try adding nuts to the recipe. I like nuts in my brownies.
- I use decimals instead of fractions because I’m annoying like that.
Random moosages as I see fit. 