Even if it would have been disappointing. The planning was harder than stir-fry, trying to find a brownie recipe with baking conditions close enough to those required for the cookie that I would have some grounds for hoping for success.
But, I was lazy and used the break-apart square cookie dough things just to keep things simple. I guess we'll see if I ended up saving time in the long run or if I just created more work for myself.
Anyway, we'll get back to the cookie dough, but here's what I put into the brownie batter:
- 1/2 c AP flour
- 1 1/4 c sugar
- 65g Dutch cocoa powder (sorry about switching units here; I wanted to use my scale)
- 1 t salt (I had kosher on hand, so that's a slightly heaping spoon full there)
- 1 large eggs
- 1/2 T vanilla
- 10 T butter
- 1/4 c chopped walnuts
I started by mixing the cocoa, sugar, butter, and salt over a double boiler on medium heat, stirring
occasionally. I actually had a little more butter than I needed according to the recipe I was cribbing from, 1 stick and then 3 tablespoons left from another stick, so I took a pat and greased an 8"x8" pan and then tossed the rest back into the mix. It never quite got smooth, but once it was at least uniformly grainy, I took the top pot off the heat to let it cool until it was just warm.
occasionally. I actually had a little more butter than I needed according to the recipe I was cribbing from, 1 stick and then 3 tablespoons left from another stick, so I took a pat and greased an 8"x8" pan and then tossed the rest back into the mix. It never quite got smooth, but once it was at least uniformly grainy, I took the top pot off the heat to let it cool until it was just warm.
At this point I added the eggs and vanilla. The original recipe said to add the vanilla, then one cold egg, then the second cold egg, but since I didn't anticipate any mixing problems I scrambled both eggs with the vanilla in advance, stuck it back in the fridge, and then stirred half of the mix at a time into the chocolate.
At this point, if you want something more like fudge, you can forget to add the flour. I did that once. It still tasted good.
I had half a cup of finely chopped walnuts but that just seemed like too much, so I added maybe a third of that to the batter along with the flour. When it was all pretty even, I poured it over--wait, interlude for a cookie:
Okay, so buttered 8"x8" pan and prefab cookie squares. Left them on the counter just long enough to get soft so I could press them more easily into the pan. You don't want to let it warm up too much or it will start sticking to whatever you use to press it. I ended up using the glass I had already employed to hold my premeasured flour and walnuts. It worked pretty well because I could twist the glass when I lifted it from the dough and there was no pullout. I put the mass of cookie squares in the middle of the pan and pressed it toward the corners, but in retrospect it might have been easier to put it at one edge of the pan and then work my way across. Well, it wasn't exactly a Herculean task either way.
Back to the brownies! I poured the batter over the cookie substrate until there was little enough batter left in the pot that I wouldn't feel ashamed licking it clean. I sprinkled half the remaining walnuts over the top--really, it seemed like there was plenty to go around--and put it in a 330° oven. Seemed like a reasonable compromise between the chocolate chip cookie and brownie recipes.
This was really the toughest part. Everything's going to cook more slowly with the extra mass. My instinct is to go with longer times at lower temperatures, so the thermal gradient in the food is flatter, but you can't just lower the temperature arbitrarily or nothing gets cooked.
I originally had it in for 25 minutes, but a toothpick in the middle wasn't coming out clean. I put it in for another ten minutes, and then ten more minutes again. Toothpick still came out wet. Okay, ten more minutes, but at 320° this time. Still a little wet at the bottom, but starting to look done in the middle: fifteen minutes at 300°, and the toothpick finally comes out clean.
The hard part here is all these door openings coupled with the fact that I can't turn off the oven timer without turning the oven itself off, so trying to coordinate the time is a hassle; I was probably only getting 7-9 minutes at temperature, but maybe that's close enough. Now that I've extended the time thrice, it occurs to me I could use the timer on my microwave instead. Oh well; good reason not to drink Coke and vanilla vodka while I'm doing science. Maybe next time.
