malted crinkly brownies
shiny tops, autumnal deepest desires, science lesson get out your notebooks
There is nothing I love more than a classic treat. If you come to my house I want to feed you apple crisp or banana pudding. I want you to roll around in a pile of warm chocolate chip cookies and finally feel content. We’re gonna do a lot of classics around here now that baking season is ramping up. Something about fall makes me want to watch movies set in New York in the 90s and eat what someone’s grandmother made me, and I absolutely will be imposing this desire of mine on all of you. First up, a good ol’ brownie.
Apparently, the brownie was invented in Chicago, at the Palmer House Hotel. According to legend, socialite Bertha Palmer absolutely insisted that their chef make a little treat for her high-society friends that they could (politely) eat with their hands. Originally (and still today at the hotel) they came with walnuts and an apricot glaze. I’m not fundamentally opposed to that, but we have malted milk powder to compete with now.
There’s actually quite a bit of science involved in the humble brownie. If you’ve ever unsuccessfully tried to make brownies as good as the box you might suspect that - the texture, the crinkly lid, the fine-line balance between fudgy without being pure fudge?
Your first trick lies in the pan you bake in. You really, really should bake brownies in an light aluminum pan. Ideally not dark metal/non-stick, ideally not glass. The texture of a brownie depends on a lot of things, but at least in part it depends on the time it takes to bake it. If it bakes too fast, by the time you get the center set your edges are going to be hard and dry (I’m looking at YOU, dark non-stick). If it takes too long to bake, you’re going to end up with gummy, not fudgy (cough, glass, cough). An aluminum pan is the happy medium. They bake fast enough to puff up, settle down and crinkle, but not so fast that the edges get dry. These pans are cheap, or you could find ‘em at a Goodwill. I’ve thrifted every one I own for like $2.00.
The second trick is in your eggs. You’ll see in the recipe below that you whip the eggs and sugar (and a couple other things) until the eggs are very pale, thick and fluffy. You’re foaming them. When you’re doing this you’re not only creating kind of a souffle-esque vibe, but you’re also dissolving a lot of the sugar. Adding solid chocolate is another source for this! All the dissolved sugar helps form the paper-thin crust, and the brownies falling slightly after they puff gives you all the cracks.
The thing about brownies is that they’re readily available (and not all that bad) in a box. If you’ve gotten this far and you’re thinking to yourself that honestly you don’t have time for my shenanigans and you will be making brownies out of a box, okay! I ask that you jazz them up. Make them with cooled coffee instead of water. Add olive oil? Drizzle the top with tahini? Definitely flaky salt. Could malt ‘em, if you’re feeling it. Just have a little fun, okay? Live a little. The brownie (and I) demand it.
malted flaky brownies
makes one eight-inch square pan. you decide for yourself how many servings that is.
1/2 cup all-purpose flour (65g)
1/2 cup and 2 tablespoons dutch-process cocoa powder
2 tablespoons malted milk powder (18g)
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter (165g)
3 oz chopped dark chocolate (around 65-70%)
1 cup and 2 tablespoons white sugar
2 tablespoons packed brown sugar (30g)
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon instant espresso
Flaky salt, for topping
directions
Preheat the oven to 350F. Line an 8x8 metal pan with foil. Depending on your foil you could use two pieces criss-crossed to fit better. Lightly grease and set aside.
In a small bowl, mix together flour, cocoa and malt powder and sift through a fine-mesh strainer.
In a medium saucepan, melt butter. Simmer and brown the butter, stirring often and scraping up the solids along the bottom, until the popping has stopped, some of the solids have browned and the rest of the butter is a bright golden yellow. Take off the heat, immediately mix in the dark chocolate to melt and set aside. It will be really liquidy!
In the mixing bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, add sugars, eggs, vanilla extract and instant espresso. Whip until thick and fluffy on medium high, about 7-8 minutes. Add chocolate-butter mixture and whisk to combine. Add sifted dry ingredients and whisk well to combine. Remove the bowl from the stand mixer, fold a few times to make sure you’ve gotten all the dry bits, and scrape into your prepared pan and spread evenly. Sprinkle the top with flaky salt.
Bake until glossy and barely firm, about 25 minutes. Something I read once said it should feel like the soft part of your forearm. Cool completely.
side notes
I just read this book - When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut. I have nothing eloquent to say, so I leave you with either the New Yorker (my fave) NYT review (shorter, less in the scientist weeds) of it. I’m planning on reading his book Maniac next.
Extra bonus, a trio of photos of Squirrel and his new favorite place to sleep, inside the heaviest weighted blanket we own:
