My lifes work....

As Michael pointed out, I am not the blogging type. I love reading blogs. But, there is no way I could come up with enough interesting material to have my own. Plus, on a bad day I might decide to write out my feelings and bear my soul to the blogger universe, which as I have experienced vicariously, never ends well.

That being said, when Michael started this blog I knew I would have to make a guest appearance to write about my greatest love in the dessert world. Brownies. The recipe that follows this post is the culmination of a decade long search for the perfect brownies.

*note: as I write this I am watching Food Network and they just boiled a turtle. Gross.

Anyway, brownies are tricky. The box mix is usually better than what people make from scratch. I don't care who you are. You could be a Pastry Chef in Paris, or great Aunt Melva whose been baking brownies for 50 years. I bet a Ghirardelli triple chocolate brownie mix could eat your brownies for breakfast, spit them out and then eat them again.



At least so I thought. I searched high and low, trying every recipe I could find. Even the brownie recipe I got in culinary school didn't make the cut. My search was given new inspiration when I ate a brownie at The Chocolate, a bakery in Orem, Utah. These brownies were a perfect 10 in my book. Really fudgey, they had a nice dark chocolate flavor with caramel undertones. They were dense and very thick. I actually wrote the pastry chef to get the recipe. She wouldn't give it to me, but did give me some helpful hints. She uses no leavening (baking soda/powder), and she whips the eggs to the ribbon.

Very few recipes have instructions like these, so this helped my search, but I just wasn't having success. About a month ago I was looking through my favorite cookbook "Baking: From my Home to Yours" by Dorie Greenspan.



There are about 10 brownie recipes and I happened upon one that I hadn't tried yet, actually, I hadn't even looked at yet. The steps were all there, plus it called for melted chocolate, and little flour (good signs in my book). For years this recipe was right under my nose. So I tried them, and now I can die happy.

These brownies are fantastic. Truly the best I've had. They are thick, fudgey, better the next day, dense, chocolatey brownies. To up the caramel flavor I substituted 1/2 a cup of b. sugar for part of the gran. sugar. No other changes are necessary, in fact follow the directions carefully, because Dorie is a baking goddess.




Rick Katz's Brownies for Julia

These were created by pastry chef Rick Katz. He made them while working with Julia Child filming the PBS series "Baking with Julia".

1 c. all-purpose flour
1 t. salt
2 sticks unsalted butter cut into small pieces
4 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped
2 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 c. gran sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 t. vanilla
4 large eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9" baking pan.

Whisk flour and salt together.

In a double boiler melt butter and chocolate. Stir until just melted. Add 1/2 cup gran sugar and 1/2 c. brown sugar to chocolate mixture. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl and add vanilla. Allow it to cool.

Put remaining 1 cup of gran sugar in stand mixer and whisk in the eggs. Add half of the sugar egg mixture to warm chocolate and stir gently.

Beat the remaining sugar-egg mixture until it has doubled in volume. This will probably take about 3 minutes.

Fold whipped eggs into chocolate mixture until barely incorporated. Sprinkle dry ingredients over batter and fold them in, working only until they disappear.

Place batter into the pan and bake.

Bake for 25-28 minutes, or until the top looks dry and a knife poked into the center comes out mostly clean. cool to room temperature.

These brownies are a bit fragile, and are even better the next day.