Baked: The Baked Brownie
Baked Bakery opened up in 2005 in Red Hook, Brooklyn. They opened with the premise of “open a great American bakery that is not a cupcake shop” and they have had great success ever since. While they used to have a bakery in Manhattan, it closed up shop, leaving their Red Hook flagship bakery as their only location. In 2008 they published their first of four cookbooks. This recipe came straight out of Baked Bakery’s book Baked New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.
The Baked Brownie is one of the signature treats at Baked. It has been featured in O Magazine and awarded best brownie by America’s Test Kitchen and the Today show. It’s a dense, chocolatey, slightly fudgy brownie that will win over the crowd. Baked suggests using dark unsweetened cocoa powder like Valrhona to give it much great depth. They also suggest only using room temperature eggs and never overbeating the batter. Be sure to check on your brownies often because, as they say, an even slightly overbaked brownie is not a Baked Brownie.
In making these brownies, we made one big, boneheaded mistake. We used powdered sugar instead of granulated sugar. I think we were so excited about brownies we blurred the words. Round two turned out much better. We ended up taking both good and bad batches to a cookout and — to our surprise — they were both a massive success.
Recipe
Ingredients
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons dark unsweetened cocoa powder
11 ounces dark chocolate (60 to 72% cacao), coarsely chopped
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 teaspoon instant espresso powder
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
5 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Butter the sides and bottom of a 9-by-13-inch glass or light colored metal baking pan.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk flour, salt, and cocoa powder together.
3. Put the chocolate, butter, and instant espresso powder in a large bowl and set it over a saucepan of simmering water, stirring occasionally, until the chocolate and butter are completely melted and smooth. Turn off the heat, but keep the bowl over the water and add the sugars. Whisk until completely combined, then remove the bowl from the pan. The mixture should be room temperature.
4. Add 3 eggs to the chocolate mixture and whisk until combined. Add the remaining eggs and whisk until combined. Add the vanilla and stir until combined. Do not overbeat the batter at this stage or your brownies will be cakey.
5. Sprinkle the flour mixture over the chocolate mixture. Using a spatula (not a whisk), fold the flour mixture into the chocolate until just a bit of the flour mixture is visible.
6. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake in the center of the oven for 30 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the baking time, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the brownies comes out with a few moist crumbs sticking to it. Let the brownies cool completely, then cut them into squares and serve.
Tightly covered with plastic wrap, the brownies keep at room temperature for up to 3 days.
