Fantastic Brownies

This will mark my first baked good in my temporary new home, a nice apartment not far from where I'll be torturing Caenorhabditis elegans with toxic molecules (for science!) for the next 4 months. As excited as I am about doing my first real research, I'm also looking forward to many baking projects.

Now, about the brownies. Holy crow. They're fantastic (as the name suggests). I was looking for a recipe that used a lot of dark chocolate, as I had a 90% Ritter Sport Extrafino Dark chocolate and I collect the wrappers of that brand. I also had some 70% dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate, all slightly mushy from the heat in my recent move with it. So I added tons of chocolate chunks, some walnuts, and a bit of espresso powder and vanilla to play up the flavours in the chocolate. I added a little baking soda that wasn't in the original recipe to make it puff up nicely, but you can omit it for a flatter, denser brownie.

My favourite parts are the crisp, crusty outer bits, giving you a nice handle with which to dunk them into milk. Make sure you whip the batter real good to develop that shiny crust!

Fantastic Brownies

Adapted from Technicolor Kitchen

100 g Extra dark chocolate (70-90%), in pieces

50 g Semisweet chocolate (50%), in pieces

5 TBSP (70g) Butter
3/4 cup (150g) sugar
2 Eggs, large
1 Tsp. Vanilla extract or paste

1/3 cup (47g) All purpose flour

1/2 Tsp. Espresso powder

1/4 Tsp. Salt

1/2 Tsp. Baking soda, optional

200 g. Mixed chocolate pieces and nuts (I used bittersweet, milk and white chocolate along with walnuts)

Preheat oven to 160ºC. Line a 8" square baking pan with foil and grease.

Set a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Melt the butter and add the dark and semisweet chocolate, mixing until completely melted.

Whisk in the sugar, followed by each egg one by one. Beat well at this stage to develop the trademark crinkly crust.

Remove from heat. Add the vanilla and sift in the flour, salt, baking soda and espresso powder. Mix in the nuts and chocolate pieces and immediately pour into the pan, spreading the top evenly with a spatula.

Bake the brownies for 30-35 minutes or until the top is dull and crackly. When cool, lift up the foil by the sides to remove. Cut into squares.