Going Beyond the Box: Baking “Real” Brownies
This weekend I made brownies from scratch for the first time ever. I must admit, I’ve been a little intimidated about going beyond dumping from a box, adding eggs and butter. Also, I really like the Betty Crocker’s gluten-free brownie mix (just add extra chocolate chips!) so I hadn’t felt pressure to find a new, better brownie.
We were going to dinner at a friend’s house on Saturday night and the only component of the meal I was responsible for were the brownies. I decided I would take the plunge and bake brownies from scratch. I was skeptical of the time, energy, and even cost that was involved in making these brownies, but the final product was worth it!
The difference in taste between these brownies and “brownies in a box” was enormous and I felt like I was eating brownies from a high end bakery. I still can’t compete with Tully’s Bakery, but I must admit they were pretty darn good and definitely better than any brownie I’ve ever made.
I used Virginia Willis’ recipe for Georgia Pecan Brownies from her Bon Appetit Y’All cookbook. I didn’t use pecans because I don’t really like nuts in my brownies and I cut her recipe in half. Of course I changed the flour as well. Here’s what I did:
Ingredients:
- ½ cup unsalted butter
- 1 cup sugar
- ¾ cups flour (I used ¼ cup tapioca flour, ¼ c. brown rice flour & ¼ c. sorghum flour)
- 2/3 cup cocoa powder (I used Dagoba organic chocolate)
- ¾ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
- 6 oz. nice semisweet dark chocolate (I used Scharffen Berger)
Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9×9 or 8×8 baking pan. (If you want to use a 9×13 in. pan then you should double the recipe.)
Cut chocolate into small pieces. If you use a large, sharp knife, this works very easily and the chocolate sort of flakes off the bar.
Melt butter over medium heat. Add sugar and stir into butter. Keep warm.
Whisk in a bowl, flours, cocoa, baking powder, and salt.
Add butter/sugar to bowl and combine.
Add eggs, chocolate and vanilla. Stir until blended.
Pour batter into pan and cook for 20-25 minutes, depending on how gooey you like your brownies.
You’ll notice I did not use xanthan gum in this recipe. I’ve recently met a few people with celiac that avoid xanthan gum so I wanted to try baking without the xanthan gum. The brownies fell apart a little when I cut them because of the absence of xanthan gum, but they were still yummy. I’d rather affect presentation over flavor any day.
Enjoy brownies with ice cream or by themselves. These brownies are so flavorful that you don’t need a lot to get the chocolate satisfaction. I promise you, it’s worth going beyond the box for these ones! Of course I’ll still keep Betty Crocker and Pamela’s in my pantry too.
