Tuesday, February 16, 2010

TWD: Rick Katz's Brownies for Julia

For the February 3rd "Tuesdays with Dorie," the recipe was "Rick Katz's Brownies for Julia," chosen by Tanya of Chocolatechic.


Fudgey, gooey brownies -- who can resist? After reading the comments on the Problems and Questions, I decided to bake these in a 9x13 pan rather than a 9x9 pan. I'm glad I did. Even in the larger pan, they took about 30 minutes to bake, and were quite fudgey.

Also thanks to Nancy who reminded us all about the "divot test" from King Arthur Flour's Web site. Definitely the best way to test brownies for done-ness!

I lined my pan with a "sling" of non-stick aluminum foil, which made it a snap to take them out.

The picture above is of the very last ones. Many of them went into a bake sale at work. The ones left at home disappeared fast!

It's interesting to compare this recipe to Nick Malgieri's "Supernatural Brownies," which are also favorites of mine. Both recipes use the same amount of eggs, flour, butter, and sugar, although Dorie uses all white sugar and Nick uses a mixture of white and brown (nice idea). The amounts of salt and vanilla are slightly different. For chocolate, Dorie uses 4 oz. unsweetened and 2 oz. bittersweet, while Nick uses 8 oz. bittersweet. How to compare? Well, let's assume we're using 60% bittersweet -- then Dorie's chocolate is pretty much equivalent to 5.2 oz. unsweetened plus 0.8 oz. sugar, while Nick's is 4.8 oz. unsweetened plus 3.2 oz. sugar. On the other hand, if we went for a 70% bittersweet chocolate, Dorie's is 5.4 oz. unsweetened plus 0.6 oz. sugar, and Nick's is 5.6 oz. unsweetened plus 2.4 oz. sugar. Either way, Nick's recipe is sweeter. The chocolate amounts are close -- the exact comparison would depend on the chocolate you use.

So, what did we think of Dorie's brownies? They were not too sweet, quite chocolate-y and almost too gooey. My notes for next time say to decrease the butter by 2-4 tablespoons and increase the flour by 2 tablespoons. I may try using a bit of brown sugar. I'm not sure the whole business of whipping up the eggs and sugar really makes a difference. It would be interesting to make two half-batches and compare. Definitely, for a whole batch, bake in the larger 9x13 pan!

6 comments:

Virginia Taylors said...

Wow! I would love a bench knife. I love the king arthur flour website. Those are my favorite cookbooks also. Your brownies made me suddenly hungry.

Barbara said...

I'm confused - did you use the recipe from Rick or the one with the Divot test? Because Ricks doesn't look like it has chocolate pieces in the cooked version...

Vicki said...

Chocolate mathematics! I love it!!! This was a great post, filled with useful information and links.

Bungalow Barbara said...

I used Dorie's recipe, found on Chocolatechic's web site.

HanaĆ¢ said...

Your brownies look great. After seeing everyone rave about these, I'm tempted to bake 1/2 a batch, although my fav brownies of all times are Nick Malgieri's Supernatural Brownies. Thanks for the side-by-side comparison.

Raymond said...

These look fantastic. I loved this recipe. To answer your question on my post, the Rigo Jancsi CHocolate Slices recipe is in The Two Fat Ladies Ride Again. You can still get it on Amazon if you can't find it at the library

Raymond