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:

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

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

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

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  4. Your photos really show the fudgy texture of the brownies.

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

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

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

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  7. Your cuts are so perfect!

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  8. 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.

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  9. 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.

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

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  11. 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!

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

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

    Ulrike from Küchenlatein

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  14. 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!

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  15. Beautiful pictures of some very yummy looking brownies!

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  16. Your brownies look wonderful!

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

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  18. Those look wonderfully fudgy and thick!

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

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  20. 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.

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  21. 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

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  22. Wow, those look crazy dense and rich. Fantastic!

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  23. 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.

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

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  25. 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).

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  26. Beautiful job! These look so fudgey!

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

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

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  29. 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.

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

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  31. 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.

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  32. 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!

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  33. 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!

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

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