Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Triple Chocolate Passover Brownies

Passover brownies! These aren't your sickly sweet squares from a Manischewitz box. They're moist, dense as earth, and sophisticated. Loaded with unsweetened chocolate, bittersweet chocolate chips, and cocoa powder, they'll have you swearing off macaroons for a long time to come. I based the recipe on Engel's Passover Brownies, but with a few Toppled Chef twists.


makes 32 brownies

for a 9 x 13 baking pan: The Tipsy Crumpet doesn't bake brownies for just herself.

Ingredients

 

4 oz unsweetened chocolate
2 sticks butter (1 cup)
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla
dash of rum 3 Tbsp sour cream or Tofutti substitute
1/3 cup and 1 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup Passover cake meal
pinch salt
1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips

Process

 

Preheat the oven to 325.

Butter a 9 x 13 baking pan.

Obtain a double boiler or make one by filling a pan one-third of the way with water, heating the water, and setting a small pan on top.

With your double boiler nice and hot, melt the butter and chocolate, stirring occasionally. I like to wait until there are only a few lumps left and remove the mixture from the heat. Don't these two ingredients get along well together? Your kitchen smells intoxicating.

Remove your nose from the chocolate-butter elixir and obtain a large bowl. Crack the eggs in the bowl, check for shell shards, muddle the eggs a bit with a fork, add the sugar, and mix until these ingredients are getting along in the creamiest fashion. (Note: I don't like to beat the eggs and sugar using an electric mixer until they're pale because I find that this makes the brownies less gorgeously dense and more light and chewy. Just my preference.)

Add the vanilla and rum and stir in the molten ecstasy you created with the double boiler. It doesn't have to be room temperature, but it shouldn't be too hot. You don't want scrambled eggs in your batter. Stir in the sour cream. You may have to whisk it so that it yields to its surroundings and dissolves.

In another bowl, sift the cocoa powder, cake meal, and salt.  Carefully stir these into the wet mixture.

Make it rain chocolate chips into the bowl. Give a few more cautious stirs.

Pour the batter into your pan.

Bake for about 35 minutes and cool before cutting on a wire rack or just your stove.

Notes

  • You can add a swirl of raspberry jam after you've poured the batter into the pan. You can also add dried cherries or walnuts or, for even more sophistication, blackberry jam. To add a jam swirl, pile a hefty amount onto a knife and swirl the knife through the batter. You may repeat a few times, with a clean knife each time.
  • Be prepared for non-kosher-keeping people--even non-Jewish people--to widen their eyes upon tasting these brownies and lunge for more.
  • You can put in more than a cup of chocolate chips.
  • some espresso powder might be nice--maybe a Tbsp mixed into the sour cream

 

Verdict

 

5 stars. I've made this for my colleagues three years in a row, and it's a huge success each time. It's probably why I'm still employed.


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