The recipe at the end of this post is nothing particularly unusual; in fact, many of you have probably already seen it and/or made it before. But I can’t help sharing a short but sweet little love story between myself and a most unlikely suitor: cocoa powder.
I have always been insistent upon only chocolate - the unsweetened kind - rather than cocoa in brownies. My experiences with cocoa brownies found them to always run a little too dry and cakey for my taste. Like anyone who loves brownies, I have a decidedly opinionated idea of how the best ones must be: fudgy, dark, and moist (but not downright wet), and, importantly, furnished with that highly desirable chewy crust. After having a major brownie craving last night with no bars of chocolate to be found, I bit the bullet and turned to everyone’s favorite chocolate queen, the lady Alice. And of course, when Alice talks chocolate, we would all do well to listen. She told me (in a soothing and authoritative voice in my head as I read her words in Bittersweet) that it is not chocolate, but cocoa that produces my coveted candylike crust, because the only fat and sugar come from the butter and added sugar rather than the chocolate itself. How on earth did I go so many years without this important knowledge?
Well, I think you can guess how this tale ends…I made the brownies, going all-out and using my fancy Valrhona cocoa powder and organic butter, and of course, she was right. The brownies are downright killer, with hearts so dark and rich they’re nearly black. They are neither dry nor soggy. The texture is, in a word: correct. If you haven’t tried this recipe before, please do, and I can promise you won’t regret it. Oh yeah, and even if you agree that the whole “beat vigorously for 40 strokes” sounds oddly like a Victorian girl’s hair-brushing regimen, just trust that this is part of the magic. Happily ever after, indeed.
Can you believe I had to lighten this photo? These babies are dark.