Growing up, my favorite thing to see coming home from the grocery store was a box of Betty Crocker brownie mix - EXTRA hype if it was the double fudge kind with chocolate chips included. So simple - just add oil, water, and egg: BOOM! My favorite way to feel like a pro baker while only being 9 years old. I didn't put much thought to what was actually in those ready-made brownie boxes until ... well... this past weekend to be honest! When my baking obsession began, it of course included Great British Baking Show binges on Netflix, thus leading me to order Mary Berry's Baking Bible and it has been a joy going through her recipes ever since. My first attempt: THIS!
And boy, was it worth it. Rich, luscious, dark chocolate-y goodness... with the slightest hint of coffee. I made it for my mom for Mother's Day and the reviews were 10/10 (she's a HUGE coffee lover!) :)
Pretty simple to start - preheat oven to ~370 degrees and get those ingredients out. Side note: this was my first time attempting a recipe from the UK. Aka if this is your first go-around as well, it is high time to invest in a kitchen scale for measuring out ALLL da gramz. I have found it to be more accurate, more organized, and definitely not as confusing as it seemed at first. I like this one from Target!
You will need a 13x9 inch pan for this recipe (the recipe calls for 12x9 but eh, what's an inch?). I started off by melting one 12 oz bag of Tollhouse Dark Chocolate chips and 1 cup of butter in a glass bowl over a pan of boiling water. Turns out this is called "double boiling" - who knew? ;) Check in on that pretty often to make sure it starts to transition from chunks to pure glossy chocolate (see below). Meanwhile, you will take your 2 teaspoons of ground coffee (I used Great Value Colombian brand mmmmmm) and dissolve it in hot water.
My next foray into UK baking was making my own "caster sugar." What I was finding online is that caster sugar is the in-between creation of our regular-old granulated sugar into the confectioner's aka powdered sugar we all know and love. To hack this, rather than go through every grocery store in town or probably have to ship some all the way over here from the UK, was put the needed amount of sugar (225 g or 8 oz) of my granulated kind in a mini food processor. I pulsed it probably 12-15 times until I could feel the sugar run softly through my fingers. (Cue this song ... that may just be me. I have a weird brain). It should NOT be powdered sugar-like - it should still have a graininess to it, but not like your crystallized-looking granulated version. You'll figure it out :)
Mix together that sugar, coffee, eggs, and vanilla extra first, then add in your melted chocolate from the stove (see above). Uh, yeah, super surprised I didn't just slurp this out of the bowl! Fold in the flour, chopped walnuts, and EXTRA chocolate chips (WHAA?! Yes...this is real) for which I just used Tollhouse Semi Sweet (classic). All of that came out looking like THIS:
Cool trick sweet Mary Berry shared that I must start doing for EVERY brownie recipe I ever make: line the cake pan with butter and parchment paper. This made for super easy transfer from out of the pan later, not to mention clean-up as well. No sticky, dried up pans to scrub. It was beautiful. Stick that pan of chocolate heaven in the oven for 40ish minutes and stick a toothpick in it to make sure it is cooked through. Dry toothpick, no goop, should be what you see. Let cool.
I thoroughly enjoyed baking this - not to mention, the sweet, delicious aroma it left in my kitchen for a couple hours. They need to make a candle out of "brownies in the oven." Hmmm... thoughts for another time. Before I forget, here are the compiled ingredient amounts below:
350 g (12 oz) dark chocolate chips
225 g (1 cup) butter
2 teaspoons instant coffee grounds
2 tablespoons hot water
3 large eggs
225 g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
75 g self-raising flour (aka all-purpose flour with baking powder and salt)
175 g chopped walnuts
225 g (8 oz) semi-sweet chocolate chips
Mary called for "plain" chocolate in her recipe, but I like the way that this turned out. It was definitely more dense - if you are a fan of ooey gooey brownies, this one might not be exactly what you're looking for. This definitely had more of a decadent, fancy ooo000oo0o0o brownie style. Enjoy!
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