Brownies Make Everything Batter

Tiramisu Brownies

tiramisu brownies

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The warm weather has finally arrived and I spent this week..making brownies. Okay, maybe they're not quite the summery recipe you might expect this week, but the sun wasn't the weather I was expecting either, so here we are. The recipe for these started out of need. We were visiting friends this past Monday, and when asked if we could bring anything, they requested dessert, and of course I was more than happy to oblige, I love a captive audience who can act as taste testers for a new recipe. This particular recipe was actually presented to many a panel of expert taste testers this week. By expert taste testers I simply mean everyone I had a meeting with this week, I get thee benefit of instant feedback and I get to win over any potential clients with my baking, the butter and sugar are better advocates for my work than I could ever be.

Sometimes in my newsletter recipes you’ll find fun, but slightly more involved recipes (see next week), and sometimes simplicity is the key, and this week is all about the sweet and simple. I needed to whip up this recipe the night before visiting friends after two very tiring days working on our garden so I was not in the mood for anything complicated.

This is totally off topic for this newsletter, but there is no editor telling me what I can write about, so forgive my little aside. As you may know, we moved into a new house back in January, a total project, with almost everything needing renovating. We are slowly getting our ducks in a row so we can start the first phase of the work, which means fun things like choosing a kitchen (the first kitchen that is actually truly mine) and the boring and scary things like planning permissions and budgets. Whilst we wait to get started, we have begun to tackle smaller jobs ourselves (anything to save a bit of money) and this past weekend that meant the garden, or as I affectionately refer to it as the jungle. The house is in a relatively poor state, it hasn't been modernised, it’s not had a lick of paint since the 70/80’s and the garden absolutely matches that energy; so overgrown that you couldn’t actually see the end of it, so overgrown that light didn’t penetrate through the canopy overgrown greenery, it looked almost cavelike. You can imagine my joy, when, after a couple days work, we stripped it right back to reveal a lovely little space which we can enjoy over the summer, before we start the building works. If you are picturing me writing this outside, enjoying an iced coffee, then you are psychic because thats exactly whats happening.

Okay back to the recipe, I ended up settling on a mash-up of a brownie and a perennial fav, the tiramisu. These are so much fun to make, incredibly simple and most importantly utterly delicious. The mascarpone topping brings so much tiramisu essence to this recipe and the generous dusting of cocoa powder really brings home the idea. The brownie recipe creates the ultimate in dense and fudgy, so if you like your brownies cakey (does anyone?) then this is not for you, not in the slightest. The trick to getting a truly dense brownie is three fold. Firstly, you need a brownie recipe designed for dense textures; that means lots of chocolate and butter with minimal if any raising agents and only a small amount of flour. Secondly, the baking is key; the brownie should be baked just until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out just a step beyond raw batter - you want a few moist crumbs, but it should still have a slight batter look to it. Thirdly, and this is a little unusual, you need to refrigerate the brownie after baking; this creates a texture that is extremely dense.

Now, I know what you’re thinking; where are the sponge fingers? How can I call them tiramisu brownies without sponge fingers? Well, this is my thought process. In a classic tiramisu the only texture you’re getting is from the sponges, but that texture is minimal anyway because they’re soaked in coffee. I considered adding a layer of coffee soaked sponges between the brownie and the mascarpone layer, but I don’t think it would add much to this recipe, the brownie adds more than enough texture and the mascarpone layer is packed with all the flavours you expect from a tiramisu. I like the clean lines of the two layers and the simplicity of the construction, but If you want to add the sponge finger layer, go for it. I would simply skip the coffee in the mascarpone layer and soak the sponge fingers in a mixture of black coffee and a little extra rum.

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