Stuart's Soliloquy to the void

Brown sugar brownies with sea salt

Sunday, March 30th, 2008 | Cooking

Over the past few weeks I have been taking my first few steps into perusing the huge number of food-related blogs on the web, and among other things fell into a couple of interesting food ‘happenings’ like the daring bakers who all try to make the same recipe each month and post their results, or the bit more fickle ‘browniebabe of the month’ (the month should be taken with a grain of salt as it does not seem to run that often). However, as a confessed brownie lover, I was hooked with the huge number of different brownies (many with recipes!) that were linked to from there, and I just had to try to make one of the most solid brownies I have seen to date, sporting no less than 340 grams of chocolate.

The recipe I attempted is Brown sugar brownies with French sea salt, and it is dense in all respects. To complement all the heavy ingredients, there is only 60 grams of flour to lighten it up a bit. The beginning of the recipe comes together nicely like any of the brownies I normally make. The margarine (as a substitute for butter) and chocolate mixture was delicious.

After baking it, the recipe calls for you to turn it out to cool off on a rack, but that was easier said than done, not only did the centre of the brownie stay in the roasting dish, but the cake further cracked when I pulled it out, yielding a veritable brownie crater landscape.

The ganache, in which I had to replace the cream with an oat based cream, came together nicely, but due to the fracturing of the cake I had to get it a lot more solid than it was after mixing and resting on the counter, so I had to put it in the fridge for 30–40 minutes before it was so solid that I dared smear it across the cake. And finally sprinkle it with a bit more sea salt. The ganache has a nice chocolate mousse quality to it.

The sea salt in the dough gives it a very nice touch, much like what is used in regular breads, but the sea salt on top of the brownie just does not work for me. I sprinkled a good deal less than what the recipe calls for (I guess I was a tad skeptical in advance) and even then it was much too salty. The brownie in and of itself without the sprinkled sea salt is wonderful, though, and can very much be recommended. I think I need to work on my cutting capabilities, though. My brownie pieces always turn out a bit rugged.

Tags: baking, brownies, cake, dessert

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