If you remember, the last experiment had me replacing all of the flour with almond meal. While these brownies were to die for warm, they were pretty greasy cold. So for my next try, I decided to try using different kinds of flours. I’ve been seeing bags of coconut flour in the store. These brownies have a theme going, so what the heck. I used roughly one part almond meal to three parts coconut flour (I say roughly, because I forgot to write the exact amounts down. I know. Bad blogger.)

Anyway, these brownies bombed. The coconut flour soaked up all the available liquid and made the brownies pretty dry. In addition, they had a very chalky, gritty texture from the flour. Bryan and I each took one bite and threw the rest away.

A few days later, I was reading one of my favorite gluten-free blogs where Shauna was talking about using teff flour in her brownies. The next day, I came home from the store with my own bag of teff flour.

For my next batch of brownies, I used the same ratio of teff flour to almond meal. These brownies weren’t greasy. They were just the tiniest bit gritty, but not overwhelmingly so. Still, they tasted kind of flat. These brownies didn’t go straight into the trashcan like the coconut flour brownies did, but they did linger in the fridge for almost a week before we finished them. Usually, that’s a sign that we don’t love something.

I’d like to give Shauna’s brownies a shot, as well as a couple more gluten-free brownie recipes that I’ve seen lately. We’ll see how motivated I am in the next few weeks.

I took a small bite of the brownies while they were still warm, and I just about died because it was so good. They were almost like a molten lava cake, but with a little more chew thanks to all the coconut in them. I may have said this once or twice, but if you served the brownies warm, over ice cream, you’d have a hit. Knowing that I’d never be able to cut the brownies while they were warm, or even at room temperature, I stuck them in the fridge until they were cold. This is where I started seeing some of the greasiness.

At this point, I could try reducing the coconut oil and/or butter and leave the flour to almond meal ratio the same, but I think I might try using some other flours, either rice flour or coconut flour, and taking the ratio back up to half flour and half almond meal.

Stay tuned.

Currently cooking from Cook This Now by Melissa Clark

This recipe is not for people who prefer their brownies cakey, not fudgy. It also isn’t for people who don’t like coconut (although Bryan, who doesn’t like coconut, seems happy enough to eat these). And those people who don’t like chocolate should just keep on going.

All you weirdos gone? Good. That leaves more of these brownies for me.

If my last dish out of this book was hearty and filling and nutritious and, well, boring, this recipe is all excitement and kind of nasty in a my-stomach-hurts-but-I-can’t-stop-eating-these way. You know you shouldn’t, but you just keep going back for one more corner, but then you cut the corner off and it looks bad and you need to even it out. And then you might as well just finish that row. Before you know it, you’ve eaten half of the pan.

Oh wait. That was me.

These were so OMG! freaking good. They are dense and chewy. The coconut flavor doesn’t overwhelm them, and by using coconut oil instead of vegetable oil, you get an extra hit of coconut flavor and the brownies are chewier. There is no leavening in the recipe, so the brownies don’t puff up and lighten at all. Trust me, that’s a good thing.

You start off by making a batter of cocoa powder, boiling water, unsweetened chocolate, butter, coconut oil, eggs, vanilla, sugar, and salt. Chopped chunks of bittersweet chocolate are stirred in, and then the batter is layered in the baking pan with sweetened coconut and topped off with a sprinkling of coarse salt. The brownies bake just until they are set in the middle (Clark warns against overbaking these; she says it’s better to underbake them and serve them with a spoon), then cooled before cutting them.

I found that the brownies cut better if they are refrigerated first. I also found out that these are mind-blowingly fantastic when eaten warm, even if you do have to use a spoon. They are what Mounds candy bars can only dream of becoming.

After making this the first time, I started wondering what would happen if I used something else instead of flour. After all, there is no leavening in the recipe, so you don’t really need the flour for structure. So I made the recipe again, but this time I substituted almond meal for half of the flour. These brownies were even better. They were a little bit less rich than the original brownies (but still dense and chocolatey), and there was just a hint of almond flavor. I’m going to keep trying the recipe, increasing the almond meal each time, to see if I can use all almond meal and no flour. If it works, these will make a great gluten-free treat!

I think these brownies are the thing that started all the buzz surrounding this bakery, and by extension, this book. Oprah made them one of her “favorite things,” and America’s Test Kitchen and the Today Show awarded these brownies top honors (brownie tester – now there’s a job I could get behind). How could I not make this recipe?

Was I wowed? Blown out of the water? Made to feel insignificant and puny? No. In fact, I really hated these brownies. Hated them. Not the recipe (easy to follow). Not the flavor (deep and chocolatey). Not the texture (moist and fudgy). No, I hated these brownies because I couldn’t get them to cut cleanly. If you look closely at the picture, you’ll see all the ragged edges and the chunks gouged out of the sides.

Stupid brownies.

Nitpicking aside, these brownies are pretty good, and I liked them better as they aged. The recipe is straightforward, calling for flour, cocoa powder, dark chocolate, butter, sugar and eggs. Instant espresso powder and vanilla give the chocolate some depth. Everything is mixed by hand, and the only tricky part is not overbaking these brownies. Next time I make these, I’ll line the pan with parchment and refrigerate the brownies before cutting them.

“Oh my.”

That was pretty much all I could think of when I bit into a square of these deep, dark chocolatey brownies. The texture was some where between cakey and fudgey, moist but not dense and crunchy from cacoa nibs. They were so good that Bryan and I had to get them out of the house before we ate them all.

In the recipe, Medrich specifically calls for a 70 percent chocolate. I only had about half the amount needed, so I made up the rest with a slightly sweeter chocolate (about 60 percent, I believe). I was worried that the brownies would be too sweet, since I was using sweeter chocolate, but it didn’t affect the final product. Now, that being said, I’m definitely going to make these again using all 70 percent chocolate.

Really, the only issue I had with the recipe was that I had to bake my brownies for a bit longer. I ended up baking them for about 45 minutes where as the recipe calls for 25-30 minutes. Minor. I’m also really loving the cacoa nibs. They add a nut-like texture, but without the nuts. The nibs, themselves, don’t seem to add much flavor. These are perfect for those who can’t eat nuts but want some of that texture in their baked goods.

At pretty young ages, my sister and I figured out that we preferred our brownies only mostly done. We had a microwave recipe that became our specialty. The edges were chewy in a microwave-baked sort of way, but the middle was best eaten with a spoon. These days, I still prefer a fudgy brownie over a cakey brownie, but even for me, these brownies weren’t cooked enough.

I had high hopes for this recipe. I mean, come on, peanut butter and chocolate? In a brownie? So I whipped up the batter, poured it into the pan and attempted to swirl it. According to the directions, you pour little over half the peanut butter batter in the bottom of the pan, top that with all of the chocolate batter and then dollop the remaining peanut butter batter on top and swirl everything together. Well, with less than half the peanut butter batter, I still ended up with too much peanut butter batter on top. Instead of getting swirls, I got another layer of peanut butter batter. I can live with that, although if I make this again, I’ll use most of the peanut butter batter on the bottom, instead of only half.

So into the oven. The brownies are supposed to bake for  30-40 minutes. I ended up baking them for about 55 minutes before a toothpick inserted into the middle came out with only a few moist crumbs attached. At that point the top layer was dangerously dark. The brownies had also risen in the pan almost all the way to the top, which I thought was strange. 

After cooling for about an hour, we cut into them and found that a thick top crust had separated and left nearly an inch of space between it and the rest of the brownies. Except for about an inch around the edges, the rest of the batter was so wet that it barely held together after cutting and couldn’t be picked up with one’s fingers.

Looking back over the recipe, here’s what I think happened: According to the directions, three eggs are beaten slightly and then added to the batter a tablespoon at a time and beaten, on medium speed, until each addition has been incorporated thoroughly. Now, according to Shirley O. Corriher in BakeWise, the more you beat eggs in a batter (brownies, cakes and cookies), the more of a separated crust you get on the finished item. Next time, I think I’ll try stirring in the eggs by hand to see if that prevents the crust from forming. I also think that will help the brownies bake more evenly.

The taste was okay. The brownies were quite rich and the peanut butter flavor came through pretty clearly. I think these have promise, but the recipe needs some tweaking.