Reinvention

The dark, fudge-y deliciousness is complete…my masterpiece has been created… MWAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA.  Well, maybe not exactly, but certainly it’s on the right track. 

Last night I finally got around to a couple of things I had been meaning to do, one being the “reinvention” of a brownie recipe.  More to the point, I’ve had a goal for a while to start coming up with recipes of my own.  It’s something I rarely do, but I’m finding the possibility more and more easy as I go along.  Practice does make perfect in the world of cooking and baking, and in my fantasy world where I have my own cookbook/photo book full of recipes for baked goods there has to be some original creations. 

Baking is basic science at its core, but it’s the creative embellishments that give a good pastry or confection some flare.  Recipes are generally adaptations of ideas that came before, and in a bigger way many creative pursuits in life fall under this umbrella.   Why do directors make the same type of movie over and over or painters continually try and capture the perfect subject?  It’s this endless pursuit of perfection that keeps us rolling along, trying to make improvements and give a baked good (or some other art form) a new and exciting twist.

For me, the same can be said for the brownie.  I love brownies, and I mean SERIOUSLY love them.  I can’t think of one I’ve ever met that didn’t at least pass across my lips for a bite or two.  Fantastic or just good, brownies are really a pretty hard thing to screw up.  The great thing about them is they don’t need leavening agents such as baking powder or baking soda.  Those two key baking elements seem to stress people out, make them nervous, and bring about a case of bake-a-phobia.  If you are that sort of person then the brownie is just the thing for you.  Not only are they crisp and crunchy on the outside, but if made correctly (in my opinion) will be moist and have a nearly fudge-like consistency on the inside.

I’ve often turned to the Barefoot Contessa as well as Martha Stewart for their brownie recipes.  Ina has the most amazing brownie pudding dessert in her Back To Basics cookbook.  Respectively, Martha has an irresistibly fudge-o-licious brownie in her Baking Handbook.  After making both of these for many different occasions, last night I decided to make my own version. 

As I searched through the pantry for the proper ingredients for either of these scenarios I realized I didn’t have what I needed.  It was late, and the grocery store wasn’t open, BUT I NEEDED A BROWNIE!!!!  It had been a long and semi-stressful week, the kind that only chocolate or a stiff drink can cure and suddenly I was on a binder.

Fortunately I had partial ingredients for both recipes, and I had the core elements like butter, sugar and flour in place, but it was the chocolate that was hanging me up.  Ina’s recipe calls for really amazing cocoa powder, Pernigotti, which I’ve only found at William Sonoma, and Martha’s recipe calls for 8 oz of semi-sweet chocolate of which I only had 3.5 oz of 85% dark chocolate.  After making some adjustments and figuring out how much of each element I wanted to try, I just went for it…not very scientific I admit, but it came out really good.  The recipe is as follows:

1 1/2 sticks of butter

3.5 oz 85% dark chocolate (in this case 1 Lindt bar) chopped

1/2 cup of good cocoa powder

2 cups of sugar (plus additional for sanding the bottom of the brownies)

5 eggs

1 Tablespoon of pure vanilla extract (or the seeds from 1 vanilla bean)

3/4 cup of flour

1/2 teaspoon of salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Butter and line an 8-inch square cake/brownie pan with parchment paper.  Set aside.

Over a simmering saucepan of water, place the butter and chocolate in a mixing bowl (not touching the water) and stir until it melts.  Remove the bowl off the heat, mix in the cocoa powder and let it cool to room temperature (about 10 minutes). 

Meanwhile, sift your flour and salt together and set aside.  Once the chocolate/butter mixture has cooled down, mix in the sugar, then add the eggs 1 at a time, whisking after each addition.  Add in the vanilla.

Finally, gently fold in the flour mixture until it’s all combined.  Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and bake for about an hour. 

Let the brownies cool in the pan for about 20 minutes.  Run a pairing knife around the edge to release them from the pan.  Cool completely on a wire rack then cut into squares.   When you are ready to present/stack them on a plate, dip the bottom of each in plain old granulated sugar.  This will keep the stacks from sticking to each other.

The brownies came out very moist and yummy.  They were a little on the dense side in my opinion, though it didn’t effect the deep, rich chocolate taste.  I’m thinking next time around maybe a little less sugar, a little more chopped chocolate and maybe some additional butter might balance it out a bit.  For now, I am happy with the results and the folks at work seemed to be as well.  I say give it a whirl if you like an INTENSE, RICH, naughty treat.

I think the chocolate inspiration came from a lovely dinner Brian and I had this past weekend.  We were fortunate enough to have a late anniversary dinner at the Farmhouse Restaurant, which is part of the Bedford Post Inn in Bedford, NY.  The restaurant is about a half an hour from our house.  I had heard of it on the Martha Stewart show one day when she had Richard Gere as a guest. He is part owner of the Inn.  The place was absolutely amazing and I would like to go back and spend the weekend there.  Of course I wasn’t prepared and didn’t happen to have my camera for our outing, but I did manage a shady snapshot of my dessert with my Iphone.  There wasn’t quite enough light where we were sitting, but I had the chocolate cheesecake covered in chocolate ganache for dessert.   The whole meal was amazing and I felt a bit like I was having dinner in a Pottery Barn catalogue…something I admittedly didn’t mind.  We had a romantic table for two facing a living room set-up with a fireplace, and no other table of diners in our range of vision.  It felt private and intimate, and the food was all around an A-plus.  There are a couple of good photos of the Bedford Post Farmhouse restaurant and a review on the Westchester Magazine website.

The drive to get there from our house took us over several backcountry roads in Bedford (out wear Martha lives).  Though it was nighttime, there were many grand homes, estates and gorgeous old stone walls surrounding the properties.  I can’t wait to go back for lunch and get a proper view of the countryside in the daylight.

Baking the brownies was also another excuse for reinvention, but this time on the photographic front.  For our anniversary, Brian gave me a lighting set to create a small shooting space in our basement.  Normally, as may be apparent from previous blog pictures, I generally rely on daylight to take most my photos.  Now I will be able to create beautifully lit set-ups regardless of the time of day or the weather outside.  It was very exciting and I think these brownie pics were a nice way of breaking in the new lights.   How else am I going to photograph pastries at 2:00am?  It’s just who I am.