TWD: French Chocolate Brownies

Good Afternoon everyone! You’ll have to forgive my tardy (late in the day but still Tuesday) posting! You see, as mentioned in my previous post, yesterday was our First Wedding Anniversary!!! :) It was lovely but all the celebration did put me behind a little bit on my TWD baking…

Oh Dorie, Dorie, Dorie… How do I love thee? Let me count (some of) the ways:
1. Your brilliance of pairing just a teensy bit of cinnamon with chocolate. This is something I may never have thought of on my own but takes my tastebuds to a subtle heaven I never knew possible.
2. These brownies are gooey and fudgy and oh so chocolaty! My kind of brownie for sure! Many other TWDers said that their brownies collapsed a bit after cooling. For some reason, my brownies had minimal sinkage (not that I’m complaining).

So without further adieu (or blabbing), the recipe:

French Chocolate Brownies
yields 16 brownies
Adapted from Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

Ingredients
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup raisins, dark or golden I left the raisins out.
1 1/2 tablespoons water Out with the raisins.
1 1/2 tablespoons dark rum I don’t even have any dark rum…
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons; 6 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature and cut into 12 pieces
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup sugar

Getting ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 300°F. Line an 8-inch square baking pan with foil, butter the foil, place the pan on a baking sheet, and set aside.

Whisk together the flour, salt and cinnamon.

Put the raisins in a small saucepan with the water, bring to a boil over medium heat and cook until the water almost evaporates. Add the rum, let it warm for about 30 seconds, turn off the heat, stand back and ignite the rum. Allow the flames to die down, and set the raisins aside until needed. I skipped the raisins. I don’t like raisins… I don’t even like grapes. I thought of subbing craisns but decided to make “plain” chocolate brownies instead.

Put the chocolate in a heatproof bowl and set the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Slowly and gently melt the chocolate, stirring occasionally. Remove the bowl from the saucepan and add the butter, stirring so that it melts. It’s important that the chocolate and butter not get very hot. However, if the butter is not melting, you can put the bowl back over the still-hot water for a minute. If you’ve got a couple of little bits of unmelted butter, leave them—it’s better to have a few bits than to overheat the whole. Set the chocolate aside for the moment.

Working with a stand mixer with the whisk attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until they are thick and pale, about 2 minutes. Lower the mixer speed and pour in the chocolate-butter, mixing only until it is incorporated—you’ll have a thick, creamy batter. Add the dry ingredients and mix at low speed for about 30 seconds—the dry ingredients won’t be completely incorporated and that’s fine. Finish folding in the dry ingredients by hand with a rubber spatula, then fold in the raisins along with any liquid remaining in the pan.

Scrape the batter into the pan and bake 50 (As you can see in the photo, I kinda like my brownies barely done) to 60 minutes, or until the top is dry and crackled and a knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and allow the brownies to cool to warm or room temperature.

Carefully lift the brownies out of the pan, using the foil edges as handles, and transfer to a cutting board. With a long-bladed knife, cut the brownies into 16 squares, each roughly 2 inches on a side, taking care not to cut through the foil.

Serving: The brownies are good just warm or at room temperature; they’re even fine cold. I like these with a little something on top or alongside—good go-alongs are whipped crème fraiche or whipped cream, ice cream or chocolate sauce or even all three!

Storing: Wrapped well, these can be kept at room temperature for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months.