Now let’s cook
The batter looks ruined at first, dull and split, and only a minute of stirring turns it glossy.
Ingredients
- 170 g dark chocolatewith at least 35% cocoa
- 113 g butterchurned from cow’s-milk cream
- 200 g sugarwhite granulated sugar
- 2 eggslarge hen’s egg, about 50 g without the shell
- ½ tsp vanilla sugarmixed with vanilla or vanillin, used to flavour baking
- 63 g wheat flourground from wheat grains
- 1 pinch saltfine table salt
- ¾ tsp ground gingera spice made from the root of the plant
- 1 tsp cinnamonthe dried bark of the cinnamon tree, used as a spice
- ¾ tsp ground allspicea powder from the dried unripe fruit of a tropical tree
- ¼ tsp ground clovesa powder from the dried unopened buds of a tropical tree
- ¼ tsp nutmega spice made from the seed of the nutmeg tree
Method
Heat the oven to 175 °C and set the shelf in the middle. Line the base and two opposite sides of a 20 × 20 cm square tin with baking parchment, leaving it to hang over the edges.
Pour a little water into a saucepan and bring it to the boil. Chop 170 g of dark chocolate with 55–65% cocoa finely, cut 113 g of butter into pieces and put both in a bowl. Turn off the heat and set the bowl over the pan so that it does not touch the water. Stir until the chocolate and butter have melted and the mixture is smooth.
Lift the bowl off the pan and whisk in 200 g of sugar. Beat in 2 eggs one at a time, stirring each in thoroughly before the next. Add ½ tsp of vanilla sugar.
Mix 63 g of flour, a pinch of salt, ¾ tsp of ground ginger, 1 tsp of cinnamon, ¾ tsp of ground allspice, ¼ tsp of ground cloves and ¼ tsp of nutmeg, tip them into the bowl. Stir for about a minute, until the batter is smooth and glossy.
Scrape the batter into the tin and level it. Bake for 35–40 minutes, until a skewer pushed into the very middle comes out with a few moist crumbs: at least 74 °C in the middle of the brownies. If the skewer carries liquid batter, bake a little longer and check again. Do not bake the brownies beyond the time given.
Let the brownies cool completely in the tin, about an hour. Run a thin knife round the edges of the tin and pull on the overhanging parchment, lift the brownies onto a board and cut them into 16 squares.
