Chocolate Brownies
Ingredients
200g vegetable shortening
200g milk chocolate
300g white sugar
100g demerara sugar
5 medium eggs
2.5ml baking powder
100g all-purpose flour
100g cocoa powder
100g chocolate chips
Method
- Line a 20x30cm porcelain dish with greaseproof paper.
- Preheat fan oven to 150°C.
- Melt the vegetable shortening, turn off the heat, add the milk chocolate, mix thoroughly once melted, allow to cool to 30°C, stirring occasionally.
- Whisk sugar, baking powder and eggs to ribbon stage.
- Fold in flour, chocolate chips, cocoa chips and cooled milk chocolate and vegetable shortening mixture.
- Transfer mixture to lined dish and put in oven for 40 minutes.
- Remove promptly from oven and allow to cool before dividing.
Discussion
I was inspired by Brian Lagerstrom's video about developing what he considered to be the greatest brownie of all time. I then spent several months tweaking it until I was happy with it.
One of my first changes was to double the quantity of milk chocolate and cocoa and scale up the other ingredients accordingly, preferring round numbers/whole packets. Mrs Cosgrove prefers the colour contrast of white chocolate chips.
I eventually settled on vegetable shortening instead of his butter and olive oil. The result is that the brownie melts in the mouth not the hand, and is not greasy to the touch. Lard was similarly effective but had a challenging odour unless one left the brownies out to air for 24 hours.
I can't remember why I reduced the proportion of flour, but it seems to work!
A porcelain dish resulted in a more even bake than a metal tray.
A baking time of 40 minutes resulted in the optimal balance between fudginess and rise for me. If you prefer your brownies more fudgy and don't mind them sinking in the middle, feel free to reduce the baking time. If you prefer more rise and can tolerate drier brownies, bake for longer.
Though I say it myself, these brownies are now a firm favourite in our family, provided my five year old daughter leaves any for the rest of us!
