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Brownie cups, otherwise known as a dense, fudgy single-serve brownie baked in a muffin tin.
Really, it's hard to go wrong with brownies. It's not like these were bad. It's just that they weren't exceptional. They were pretty good, but I've made a lot of better brownies over the years (like Thomas Keller's bouchons). The timing on the recipe was also off. The author suggests 15 minutes for baking, but it took at least 20, and my brownies still fell quite a bit once they cooled. They were fully baked though and they firmed up nicely after an hour in the fridge post-cooling (which is a something I believe improves most brownies - I like fudgy brownies, not cakey ones).
I brought these to a friend's house, and people ate them happily enough, although the brownies were significantly improved after dunking them in the caramel sauce I brought along.
This is recipe no. 3 out of the ones I've attempted out of Little Flower, and I am realizing that I didn't go into this with a plan for what to do if I like some fraction of the recipes, but not all of them. Considering the fact that I have at least 10 more recipes in this cookbook bookmarked to try, maybe this was an anomaly. I think I'll give another savory recipe a chance. I guess I'm changing the rules from 3 recipes to a minimum of 3 - because missing out on trying her Buttermilk Pretzel Rolls seems like it could be a tragedy.
Adapted slightly from Little Flower: Recipes from the Cafe
Ingredients
- 1 cup (4 ounces) unsweetened chocolate, broken in pieces or chopped
- 1 cup (6 ounces) semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 1 cup (2 sticks) butter
- 1 cup (200 grams) granulated sugar
- 1 ½ cups (175 grams) firmly packed light brown sugar
- 5 large eggs at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1 ¼ cups (175 grams) all-purpose flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325°F.
- Line muffin pans with paper cups (or grease the tins). This recipe makes enough to fill 4 standard 6-cup trays.
- Melt chocolates and butter together in microwave for 30-second increments, stirring in between, until just melted. This should take about 2-3 minutes of microwave time. Allow this to cool, about 5 minutes.
- Whisk together sugars, egg, & vanilla until fluffy (about 3 minutes).
- Fold in cooled chocolate mixture.
- In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, & salt. Fold the flour mixture into the wet ingredients.
- Fill the prepared muffin tins ¾-full with batter. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until beginning to crack on the surface and the edges are puffed. When done, moist crumbs should stick to an inserted toothpick.
- Allow to cool for at least 5 minutes, then transfer to a metal cooling rack until completely cool.
- Transfer to refrigerator, chill at least 1 hour to set the fudgy center.
