spicy brownies recipe ideas?

[pax]

I am currently enjoying a spicy chocolate kick, thanks to a lucky shopping day at World Market...

I bought a basketful of Vosges' Red Fire Bar (55% cocoa, ancho and chipolte peppers, and Ceylon cinnamon) and Chuao's Spicy Maya (60% cocoa, pasilla chile and and cayenne pepper).

I was actually contemplating just chopping up the chocolate I have to make brownies, but that seems like such a waste when I have good bittersweet Valhrona and good fresh cinnamon and all kinds of pepper powders.

Any ideas about what kinds of proportions to start with? And what would you do about the sugar? Keep it the same as normal?

I normally use the Gourmet version of Katherine Hepburn's brownies, I like them gooey.

[etalanian]

In my humble opinion, any recipe is really dependent on an individual's personal taste.

I love chocolate with hot flavorings added, and prefer to have my chocolate flavors for this purpose be bittersweet. I've never made Hepburn's brownies, nor seen the recipe, but would recommend adding a little cocoa powder (and decreasing the flour a bit to balance the wet/dry ingredients) to increase the dark chocolate flavor.

I like Ancho chilis for this purpose. You can also get a similar effect with Pasillo peppers. The heat isn't overwhelming, and it sneaks up on you at the end. So you get the richness of the brownie in your mouth, the dark chocolate flavor, and then the warm heat of the chilis in the back of your throat. Quite lovely.

Eileen

[Kouign Aman]

If it were me: I didnt want much flavor from the chili, just the piqante, therefore same sugar. Cayenne to taste. For an 8x8" pan, start with a teaspoon, taste the batter. First time, stop before you think its quite hot enough. If you wanted, add something like chipotle powder more for the smoky flavor than the hot.

The heat might be extracted better if the pepper is mixed with the fat first, but you could try that on your second batch, perhaps.

[Habeas Brulee]

My favorite spicy brownies are my Raspberry Pomegranate Urfa-Biber Brownies, which are based on an Alice Medrich recipe. The recipe is available here.

If you go look at the photo on the page I linked to, you'll see that they are very gooey indeed!

[JeanneCake]

Maida Heatter took Hepburn's brownies, and layered them with raspberry jam in one of her books.

If you have any pepper jelly, you could do the same (it is off topic from your original question, which I would answer with adding a lot of freshly ground pepper to get the kick you want. Start with 1/2 tsp for the normal batch of Hepburn brownies in an 8" pan.) The technique is to make a batch (or a double batch), pour it into the pan and freeze it; layer on the jelly/jam/preserves and pour on the remaining brownie batter (or make a second batch while the frozen layer thaws). Bake as usual, but the toothpick tests with a few moist crumbs clinging as usual.

If you like nuts in your brownies, you could always make a spiced pecan with the pepper powders and use those in the recipe....

[Habeas Brulee]

JeanneCake - What a fun idea! You could make a really spicy fruit jam for that, too. Or get wild and use rosemary garlic jelly.

[SuzySushi]

My favorite spicy brownies are my Raspberry Pomegranate Urfa-Biber Brownies, which are based on an Alice Medrich recipe. The recipe is available here.

If you go look at the photo on the page I linked to, you'll see that they are very gooey indeed!

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Ooooh! These sound really good! My first time to hear of urfa-biber too, but I have a package of Aleppo pepper in the freezer and just bought a packet of ras el hanout, so I'll experiment with those...