Heart of Darkness Brownies

[paulraphael]

Heart of Darkness Brownies

Serves 30 as Dessert.

These are my favorite, in every way: dense, buttery texture, slightly sour tang, crackly crust, all emerging from the dark depths of high quality bittersweet chocolate.

They're a complete reworking of a longtime favorite brownie recipe that I traced back to Maeda Heatter. When I tried to make the original version with high quality chocolate, the flavor was improved, but the brownies fell apart. A year of exploration into the mysteries of chocolate, and a dozen recipe generations later, I got it to work.

The sour cream adds moisture and a subtle acidity. The cocoa provides a bit of structure without diluting the chocolate, as increased flour would. The dusting of sugar on top allows a nice crust to form; hard to do otherwise in a truly bittersweet recipe.

Note: It is important to use good quality, bittersweet chocolate, with 60 to 72% cocoa solids in this recipe. Please don't use Baker's or Nestle supermarket chocolates. See my food processor variation of the Maeda Heatter recipe if that's all you have. It is not necessary, however, to use the most expensive chocolates. In my experience the subtlety of very high end chocolates doesn't make a big enough difference in brownies to be worth it. Callebaut 70% is an excellent option and was used for testing.

• 12 oz / 340g bittersweet chocolate, at room temperature, chopped into small chunks
  
• 12 oz / 340g unsalted butter (plus about 2 tsp for greasing pan)
  
• 1-1/4 c / 238g white sugar (can be adjusted to taste based on bitterness of chocolate)
  
• 2 T / 24g (approx) additional sugar for dusting
  
• 3/4 c / 100g all-purpose flour
  
• 1/4 c / 24g cocoa powder (plus about 2TB for dusting pan)
  
• 1 tsp / 6g salt
  
• 4 large eggs 200g
  
• 2/3 c / 140g sour cream
  
• 1 T / 14g vanilla extract
  
• Optional: chopped nuts or chocolate chunks
  

requires small and medium mixing bowls, and a saucepan large enough for all ingredients (2-1/2 qt for whole recipe; 1-1/2 qt for half recipe). if the pan isn't big enough, then you will also need a large mixing bowl.

melt butter in heavy saucepan over low heat

whisk in sugar until smooth and thick

sift and thoroughly stir together the flour, cocoa powder, and salt. whisk into the butter/sugar mixture util smooth.

turn heat as low as possible, and stir chocolate into butter/sugar/cocoa mixture until mostly melted. remove from heat, and continue stirring until smooth. allow to cool until just above room temperature; about 80 degrees F. it should become fairly thick. you can speed the cooling process by putting the pan in a water bath and stirring.

while mixture is cooling, preheat oven to 300° with rack in center. grease baking pan and lightly dust with cocoa powder. optionally, line the bottom with a greased/dusted with cocoa sheet of parchment, to make serving easier.

shortly before chocolate mixture is cooled, combine eggs and sour cream in a medium bowl. whisk until well mixed, pale, and a bit frothy. do not try to incorporate enough air to increase the volume. stir in the vanilla.

stir egg mixture into the other ingredients (if the saucepan is big enough, just do it in the pan). If mixture gets thick and lumpy, it means the chocolate has cooled too much--return it to the stove, and stir over low heat. mixture should get fairly smooth.

If you're incorporating any chopped nuts or chocolate chunks, stir them in.

pour into prepared pan and smooth top. dust a light, even coating of sugar over the top .

bake about 35 to 45 minutes, depending on oven and batch size. batter should rise evenly from center to edge. the top surface should look uniform. a tester should come out of the center dirty, but without any large chunks of batter attached. better undercooked than overcooked.

allow to cool on cooling rack. they can be served room temperature, warm (very soft), or chilled (like fudge). they keep a long time at room temperature or refrigerated, but crust will soften quickly.

These brownies are delicate; be careful cutting and serving. they should be cooled to room temperature (or ideally chilled) before slicing. a palette knife or offset spatula works well. use your fingers to keep crust from breaking up when removing the blade. a pizza wheel also makes good clean cuts (although you'll have to begin and end the cuts with a knife). a thin, flexible metal spatula, like an offset spatula, cookie spatula, or fish spatula, makes it fairly easy to serve them without damage.

(I just learned that there's another recipe, published by a cookbook author, with the same name as this one. There are no other similarities. The other recipe uses a much lower proportion of chocolate and is jammed full of candy. Don't be fooled!)

Keywords: Chocolate, Brownies/Bars, Dessert

( RG1987 )