Tuesday, June 3, 2008

TWD - French Chocolate Brownie



The TWD recipe for this week was chosen by Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook and is French chocolate brownies. The recipe called for flambéed raisins to be included in the mixture. I don’t like raisins and so completely left them out. I thought about adding craisins, but they just didn’t seem to go with brownie. Dorie seems to use a lot of raisins in her recipes – I tend to leave them out.

These brownies used all chocolate – the recipes I tend to use for Brownie have cocoa as well as chocolate. They had a nice dense texture but probably weren’t as gooey as I like brownie to be. Actually, Dorie says in her preamble to the recipe that the recipe was meant to be a cake, but the group of French chefs she baked it for thought it was brownie. I think it is more cake like than brownie. One of my taste testers said he thought it was creamy in the middle – maybe that was what Dorie was originally intending?



Judging this brownie as brownie I would give it probably a 6.5 out of 10, but thinking of it simply as a nice chocolate cake/slice I think I would give it 7.5.

See what the other TWDers thought here.

36 comments:

Cakelaw said...

These look delicious Tammy.

Anonymous said...

I love those pictures. The texture looks pretty great to me. Nice job.

Engineer Baker said...

Wow - those look intensely fudgy and moist inside! And how did you not get the crackled top? So jealous!

steph- whisk/spoon said...

these look good! i agree dorie that is way too heavy handed with the raisins!!

Anonymous said...

Your photos really show the fudgy texture of the brownies.

What's with Dorie and raisins? I ditched them, too! ;)

Sweet and Savory Eats said...

Dense is the perfect way to describe these! Great job.

Linda said...

Delicious looking results. I like how thick and dense your brownies look!

Anonymous said...

Your cuts are so perfect!

Anonymous said...

I too was wondering why Dorie uses so many raisins? I mean, I think they're okay and all but geez... raisins in brownies?! No thanks.

That said, your brownies look great! You take wonderful pictures.

Jennynz said...

These were really nice, quite smooth and creamy in texture too. I do agree that some cocoa would have given a little more depth of flavour though.

Jules Someone said...

Mine look similar to yours. I was a little underwhelmed also. Oh well, on to the strawberry tart!

slush said...

Yours cut so nicely! Im jealous. I did use the raisins and loved them. But, I am partial to chocolate covered raisins and it tasted very similar.

Fab job!

kimberly salem said...

great job on the brownies! i totally agree that they're better when branded as a cake :)

ostwestwind said...

Great looking cake/brownie :-). I think the taste was good, IMHO only 5 out of 10 in both cases ;-)

Ulrike from Küchenlatein

becs said...

Yes I was disappointed with this recipe - not chocolately enough without the cocoa and the texture was wrong. Yours look a lot better than mine did!

noskos said...

Beautiful pictures of some very yummy looking brownies!

April said...

Your brownies look wonderful!

Carrie said...

wow, yours turned out so dense and rich looking! Beautiful!

April said...

Those look wonderfully fudgy and thick!

Heather B said...

Looks great! I definitely think these are more cake like than brownie but they were still delicious!

The Kitchen Vixen said...

I nixed the raisins as well. I have no idea how brownies and raisins are supposed to go together. Ewww. Great pics! The brownies look deceivingly fudgy.

ostwestwind said...

The picture is great, glad you gave them so much points.

I am with you about the raisins and IMHO it's neither a great brownie nor a great cake recipe

Ulrike from Küchenlatein

Jayne said...

Nice job! Those look yummy!

Anonymous said...

Wow, those look crazy dense and rich. Fantastic!

marae said...

mine were fudgy in the middle too. however TASTE WISE, they were amazing all the way. i used a lot of bittersweet choco, raspberries and chambord! i love your chubby brownie photo.

Unknown said...

Wow - nice smooth edges! And they look so dense and fudgy - delicious.

Andrea said...

Your brownies cut so nicely. I think they may be the prettiest so far!
Shame it wasn't the recipe for you (there are 11 more brownie recipes of Dories to choose from though).

PheMom said...

Beautiful job! These look so fudgey!

CB said...

Your brownies look so fudgey! Great job!
Clara @ I♥food4thought

Shari@Whisk: a food blog said...

Your brownies look PERFECT! How'd you do that?!
Shari@Whisk: a food blog

Anonymous said...

I'm an attorney from Alaska. Just a fun fact. I agree with your taster, mine were creamy as well (although I cooked mine in the crock pot, maybe that's why). I'm not a fan of fudgey brownies, so that was nice.

Mari said...

Love the papery top on your brownies, they look lovely!

Cecilia said...

Looks good! I thought that these brownies were more like cake, which was what she was going for. I think someone called it brownie because the cracked top makes it look like one. As soon as you take a bite, though, the texture is all cake.

Susie Homemaker said...

So glad I dropped by your blog - great job! I didn't use raisins at all - I subbed like so many others this week! Looking forward to see your post next week!

Dolores said...

I'm with you... Dorie's got an obsession with raisins. Sometimes they make sense to me, others they don't. Great job with your fruit-less brownies!

Jaime said...

your brownies are sliced so perfectly! i don't really care what you call these, i thought they were so good :)