Happy Brownie Day

I was up before the sun this morning, so excited that the day was here. It isn't Christmas or my birthday, but National Brownie day, and having found out about this special day of chocolatey-ness late last night, I wanted to be up early before work to try out a new vegan brownie recipe.

It has been a long while since I've baked, and moving into a new place, this would also be my first opportunity to test out the oven. And while I can't say I'm totally happy with the results, as I always used to say, "Experiments are essential!"

Surfing the web last night, I discovered that December 8th is National Brownie Day, and looking for an excuse to indulge in chocolate (as if I needed one), I began searching for a quick easy recipe. Though I found one on allrecipes.com, there were many notes on adapting it and being inspired, I decided to adapt it myself to create a Mexican Vegan Chocolate brownie.

To cut down on the oil, I decided to follow the comments from the allrecipes.com recipe, and use 1/4 cup oil and 1/2 cup applesauce. Not having any applesauce, but lots of apples, I made my own by vita-mixing apples with just a bit of water. I've done it before and it's worked, and it worked again. So far so good.

To add the Mexican flavor, I decided to add 1 wedge of Ibarrra chocolate, labeled "Genuine Mexican Chocolate," to the 1/2 cup of water. And to bring out the chocolate taste, I also added 2 teaspoons of instant coffee. I used hot water to dissolve everything and poured that into the mixing bowl which had the 1 cup of flour and sugar. The recipe called for 1 cup of sugar; some comments used 3/4 cup, but to cut down on the sweetness I initially decided to use 1/2 cup (which I would discover wasn't quite enough.)

One of the comments from allrecipes.com said that the recipe was too crumbly and that for a more moist and firm brownie, mix the water with the flour and sugar first. So I did. When I added the hot Mexican mocha to the dry mix, everything began to gum up and I wondered if that would be a problem.

I went on to add 1/4 cup of oil, 1/2 cup of my homemade applesauce, and 1/2 teaspoon each of baking powder, salt, vanilla, and cayenne pepper (my addition to add the Mexican kick.) Mixing it together, it was looking "not so gummy." I was hopeful, but tasting it, I thought, "Bleck!" It was not right. "Too bitter," I thought, meaning - not enough sugar. Thus, I added another 1/4 cup, blended it in, sampled it, and felt better about my new creation.

Into a greased pan; into the 350 degree oven; and with no eggs to worry about, I licked the bowl totally clean, all before the sun came out.

My chocolate licking, however, came to an abrupt end when all of a sudden the fire alarm started going off. This was the first time using the oven in months, and probably years as the staff resident before me said she never used it. I figured the smoke was not from burning brownies, which I had just put it, but from the dust that had accumulated and fact that I had not turned on the fan. The fan along with windows opened helped air out the place and I could enjoy the bowl licking on this national chocolate holiday.

As I opened the windows, I did hear the rain coming down. And being a rainy day, the sun never really came out, but when the timer went off after 20 minutes to let me know the brownies were nearly down, there was a bit of light outside.

Though I checked for doneness, it was hard to tell with this black metal pan I was using. With the recipe saying 25, or 30 for more doneness, I gave this new creation another 3 just in case. In retrospect, I should have taken them out.

Though the edges were looking a bit "done," overall they looked good. After cooling them, I couldn't wait to sample. Hmm... While the texture was a bit dense, the flavor was excellent - a nice balance of sweet and spicy, just how I like my Mexican drinking chocolate.

There was something however that just wasn't right. The brownie was dense, but gummy not gooey. It was similar in texture to the chocolate vegan cake my partner made, using baking powder instead of the the required soda. Yet in double checking before and after this baking escapade, the recipe did call for baking powder, not soda. May be the hot water did mess up the glutenizing. Or may be my homemade applesauce substitution contained too much or too little of something.

Though I enjoyed the taste, these brownies would not be for public consumption. I would take one to the office, however, and get the opinion of one of my co-workers who's sampled enough of my experiments over the years to try it.

She agreed that the taste was nice -- with a subtle heat upon first bite, but kicking in with a nice warming sense toward the end. Her comment, "Did you bake these this morning?" "Yes" was my reply. "It's the rain" was her conclusion.

"The rain?" She proceeded to explain how the rain can mess up the best of bakers and recipes, herself included. I felt better about my little baking experiment gone gummy.

In spite the texture because of the weather (or possibly some other baking boo-boo), there is something homey about a vegan brownie with a nice Mexican chocolate bite paired with a cold cup of almond milk (or a scoop of coconut ice cream) on a wet wintry day. Not a bad way to spend National Brownie Day, if you ask me, especially when there's a whole 8x8 inch pan of brownies now waiting in my kitchen.

HAPPY BROWNIE DAY!

"Study Bake" Brownies

I had been waiting for the right moment to make them. With no papers pressing, the morning sun gone, and rain clouds moving in, the afternoon seemed right to take a study break and stretch my emerging chocolate baking skills with Alice Medrich's recipe for Classic Unsweetened-Chocolate Brownies from her book, Bittersweet.

A friend suggested I call my "study break bake" a "study bake," and this round was definitely a study in baking brownies as I needed to adjust the amount of ingredients because of the chocolate I would be using.

A few months back, my mom received an 85% cacao, 3.5 oz bar of Valrhona. A bit too bitter to eat as a bar, this very excellent chocolate needed an excellent recipe to showcase it. The problem: I could find no recipe that uses an 85% bar. Recipes are based on the standard 58%, 66%, or 70% blend of chocolate liquor with the requisite sugar to total 100%. Alice's book makes it clear that stronger chocolates can affect the taste and texture of recipes in unexpected ways because of the chocolate and sugar percentages, thus other ingredients need to be adjusted appropriately.

Alice writes, "The effect of increasing liquor and decreasing sugar is exaggerated because manufacturers usually add less extra cocoa butter to chocolate when they increase the total amount of chocolate liquor (which has cocoa butter in it), so the amount of nonfat dry cocoa solids increase more than the fat as the percentage of chocolate goes up. The effect of using a higher-percentage chocolate is a little like adding cocoa powder to a recipe and subtracting sugar at the same time" (p. 345).

Get that? That's why this was definitely a "study bake" brownie. I needed to calculate the decreased amounts of sugar and butter and the increased amount of chocolate required for this recipe to compensate for the 85% bar. Add to this the fact that the recipe called for 4 oz. of chocolate, I only had one 3.5 oz bar, and I would make up the difference with the leftover 100% squares from the Chocolate Whiskey cake, it became a complicated little equation.

Given that brownies are always yummy as long as they are not totally overbaked and dry, I figured trying to calculate the adjusted amounts for brownies would be safer than attempting something else. And with the taste of brownie comfort still lingering on my palate as I now sit and blog, I think my inclinations were correct - for the most part - at least for taste.

The recipe called for 4 oz of unsweetened chocolate with 8 T (1 stick) butter and 1 1/4 cup sugar. In the appendix of Alice's book, she has guidelines for substituting 50-58%, 62-64%, 66%, and 70-72% for unsweetened (aka 100%) chocolate. No guidelines for substituting 85%, but doing the calculated estimations, I decided to go for 3.5 oz 85% + 1.5 oz. unsweetened, with the full stick of butter and 1 cup of sugar.

After the non-Alice whiskey chocolate cake recipe, I was glad to return to my chocolate diva. I am thankful for the little tidbits she provides to assure the newbie baker I be that I am on the right track.

For example, though I now feel comfortable melting chocolate, this recipe required a slightly different approach. Because all the ingredients would be added into the melted chocolate and butter, the mixture needed to be hot enough. How hot? "Hot enough that you want to remove your finger fairly quickly after dipping it in to test." Taste testing, I mean, temperature testing the chocolate with my finger was not only effective, it was fun, especially since I had the opportunity to lick off and sample the evidence a good 6 times until it was "just right."

After adding the 1 cup sugar, 1 t vanilla, and 1/4 t salt, then the two eggs, one at time, the 1/2 cup flour came next as the batter truly appeared "smooth, glossy." As it began to "come away from the sides of the bowl," just as Alice said it would, I continued to beat with my rubber spatula for 1-2 minutes as instructed. The picture doesn't really reflect it, but I was encouraged to see the batter in my bowl behaving just as Alice said it should. It came from the sides like a big brown glob of liquid silly putty. It was cool.

Because I've learned that my mom's oven is a bit hotter than Alice's, less time is needed. Rather than 20 minutes at 400 degrees, after about 18 minutes, the brownies looked "dry" on the surface and began "to pull away from the sides of the pan," as Alice said they would, indicating they were done. The inserted toothpick was more "gooey," than "quite gooey" when it came out from the center, but the brownies smelled warm and wonderful as the tray went into the ice bath to cool per Alice's instructions.

I probably should have let the brownies cool a bit longer than I did before trying to cut them, but Alice didn't give a time and I was anxious to sample. There's just something about a warm brownie (with walnuts - about 2/3 cup) on a cold and wet day that brings an assuring embrace of comfort.

Though the taste was a bit sweeter than I expected, there was a subtle bittersweet bite that created a wonderfully complex chocolate symphony which is hard to describe in words. The depth of flavor is probably due to the quality of chocolate used. It's sweet - yet not too sweet. It has a bittersweet bite - yet not too bitey. Though there was no coffee or alcohol, there was a rich sophistication. The walnuts created a wonderful balancing crunch to the gooey brownie texture, and stood up to the strong chocolate tones with its bold nutty accents.

While I really like the taste of these brownies (which are definitely better than the boxed ones I've made), I have 3 issues with how they came out. I don't know if it was me, the substitutions I made, or heaven forbid, Alice's recipe, but...

(1) The brownies were a bit oily -- not a bad oily, just a bit oily. I should have went with my original calculations of deleting 1/2 teaspoon of butter rather than being lazy and using the full stick. I think the extra 1/2 teaspoon plus the oily nature of walnuts were a bit too much.
(2) The brownies were crumbly and simply did not hold together well when I cut them.
(3) And as I cut them, they stuck to the foil liner which Alice said to use to get the brownies out of the pan onto a board to cut. She said foil or parchment. I think parchment would have been a better choice.

Thus, if you can imagine, because these brownie were a bit oily, crumbly, and stuck, cutting them was a frustrating nightmare. The one good thing about it all is that the chocolatey mess, which stuck to the cut bits of foil and lay all over the cutting board, did give me an excuse to eat up all the crumbs and to delay the research for another paper. That, I thoroughly enjoyed.

Now it's back to the books.