Sacherbrownies, Suessified

Big A, little a, what begins with A?

Austrians eating apricots
A...a...A

Big B, little b, what begins with B?

Baking a brownie base
Buttery and bittersweet

Big C, little c, what begins with C?

A caliginous coat of chocolate
C...c...C

Big D, little d, what begins with D?

Decorous dessert done differently
Documented in ditty

Sacherbrownies

Brownies:
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
4 tbs. unsalted butter
1 c. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
1/2 c. flour
Filling:
1 c. apricot preserves
Glaze:
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
4 oz. bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips
3 tbs. butter

For Brownies: Preheat oven to 350 F. Line an 8 x 8-inch pan with foil and grease. Melt 2 oz.
unsweetened chocolate and 4 tbs. butter in a medium, heavy saucepan over very low heat, stirring constantly until smooth. Set aside to cool completely. Stir in sugar and vanilla, then eggs. Add flour until just combined. Spread batter in pan and bake for roughly 23 minutes. Allow brownies to cool completely before proceeding.

For Filling: Spread apricot preserves over brownies.

For Glaze: In a double boiler, melt unsweetened chocolate, bittersweet chocolate chips, and 3 tbs. butter in a double boiler. Smooth mixture over apricot preserves. Refrigerate until set (at least 1 hour). Note: once glaze is set, it's best to let the brownies return to room temperature before serving. The glaze will not melt.

New York Times Tête-à-Tête (III)

Gabby was in my French class. There were many reasons to hate her, chief and most puzzling among them the fact that she spoke French fluently. Also, she was a porcelain-complected redhead with a button nose, no body fat, and the easy self-confidence of a woman twice her age. Amidst her cripplingly awkward, puberty-stricken peers, Gabby looked as out of place as a quadriplegic 'Nam vet on the uneven bars.

The French Chocolate Brownies are similarly displaced as one of three prototypical brownie recipes as selected by the New York Times. And they're French, so that association also provoked the weak simile you just suffered through.

The recipes for French Chocolate and Supernatural Brownies differ only slightly, but the relative results suggest no shared evolutionary paths. The French Chocolates are so cake-like, their chocolate taste so mellow, that an identity crisis seems imminent. What keeps me from calling a spade a spade, however, is the following bucolic image:

It's a mild, dewy Sunday afternoon in late March. A puff of a breeze carries the scent of fresh cut grass and the sound of laughing preschoolers around tables dressed in red-checkered tablecloths, tablecloths by now tattooed with ketchup, mustard, and potato salad stains. The time for dessert has arrived, but one question remains:

Q: What dessert will satisfy the demands of ruffle-socked towheads with sensitive little palates and their pretentious mothers, pinkies perpetually pointing skyward?

A: These brownies develop a delicate, flaky crust, not unlike phyllo dough in texture. This photograph doesn't do justice to the billowy height of the French Chocolate Brownies, but it's a big part of their appeal. Even small squares seem bounteous; you inner glutton will luxuriate in biting into a brownie that keeps on going. This psychological trick is complemented by the brownie's moist, fluffy crumb and its cloyingly sweet chocolate flavor; no single mouthful satisfies a chocolate craving. And yet, every single mouthful satisfies the desire for a mouthful of brownie.

By my standards, the French Chocolate Brownies are just barely brownies. They are light and buttery at the expense of being chocolatey, and chocolateyness is the best feature of the brownie. But because these brownies are appealingly mild and would not overwhelm children, the elderly, or pregnant women, I am making room for them in my pantheon of sweets. I would recommend you do the same, especially if you're juvenile, geriatric, or gestating.

(Thanks for the photo, BBC Sport!)

New York Times Tête-à-Tête (II)

Before I compare the New Classic Brownies to the aforementioned Supernatural Brownies, I should - as your arbiter of recipe reputability - disclose my biases. Sure, an objectively perfect brownie cannot and should not exist. To each his own brownie that promises bliss. My personal preferences, however, make a fine foundation for anyone's standards of brownie excellence:

• Texture - The density of my ideal brownie falls somewhere between that of a tar pit and a black hole. If we're going to be partisan about it, yes, I will vote Fudgy this November. I pardon undercooked brownies with papal mercy, though I prefer solid to soupy baked goods. Chocolate chunks - cooled overnight into solid nuggets of chocolate - should be present in every bite of my brownie.
  
• Flavor - The darker the chocolate, the brighter my day. My proclivity for chocolat noir does not inhibit any fondness for milk or white chocolate, but if presented a multiracial plate of brownies (circumstances of circumstances!), I would pick those brownies holding Nietzchean worldviews.
  
• Presentation - Now is not the time to get cute with portion control. So squat, square, and sizeable are my ideal brownies that a dozen of them would suffice to build a wind-proof fort for five toddlers. Icing need not act as mortar. Efforts at artful plating are wasted on me.

I usually try to sideline my prejudices when judging others (celebrities excepted). With the New Classic Brownies, I didn't have to.

The preparation of New Classic Brownies required just one bowl. The batter was gritty and its consistency was not unlike magma, which to me was a promising sign. Unlike the Supernatural and French Chocolate Brownies, the New Classic recipe called for unsweetened chocolate. This accounted for their darker matte, mahogany hue.

Cigars would have paired perfectly with these brownies, both being indiscreet oral fixations of the smoky variety. The dark chocolate dominates the palate, seeps into the bloodstream, and elicits a high that might put nicotine out of a job. New Classic Brownies are essentially gilded frames in which to showcase fantastic chocolate, so break out the Valrhona for this recipe. These brownies are thick but not greasy; they pose no threat to cloth napkins or power suits and thus are all the better for dining on a higher plane of pretension.

The corollary to such an advantage: New Classic Brownies are too bitter for immature taste buds. I baked the three New York Times brownie recipes to reward sixth graders for good behavior, and the New Classic Brownies were least favored by the students. Playful brownies these are not.

Rather, New Classic Brownies are at home amidst affluence. They are powerful, serious, and rich. Serve these brownies to the most discriminating investment bankers, lawyers, and doctors you know. After dessert, they'll be in your debt.

New York Times Tête-à-Tête (I)

If you're reading this blog, you're likely the kind of sophisticated foodie who would have devoured Julia Moskin's article, "Simple Pleasure, American Style" in the New York Times last April. Moskin deftly described the history and defining characteristics of the brownie and sprinkled her piece with technical points from seasoned bakers. By now many bloggers have tried one of the three brownie recipes that accompanied the article: Supernatural Brownies, New Classic Brownies, and French Chocolate Brownies. The goal of Moskin's article seemed to be to pinpoint the perfect brownie recipe; bloggers interpreted the Supernatural Brownies as such since they were the author's favorite, neither too fudgey (like the New Classic Brownies) nor too cakey (like the French Chocolate Brownie).

Jennifer at Bake or Break liked them, as did Jessica at This Mama Cooks. But they didn't cure The Wednesday Chef's craving for a thick, chocolatey slab of a brownie, and with her I empathize. From ribbony batter to fully baked, the Supernatural Brownies resembled good boxed brownies, but nothing more. I should know because the Supernatural Brownies were the first brownies I ever made from scratch, and they gave me little reason to make brownies from scratch a second time. Though the brownies were toothsome - light, chewy, definitely chocolate, in sum perfectly adequate - epitomic of their kind they were not.

The Supernatural Brownies, in fact, could not have been perfect. The bipolar scale on which we judge brownies, based on texture, reflects the gradations of our preferences. If we can't agree on a standard for at least one variable of the brownie, how can we agree that any brownie is perfect?

We shouldn't. When we strain to assign brownies superlative titles, we undercut their culinary flexibility. Let's instead define each brownie by what makes it uniquely satisfying.

In light of all this, I stand by my statement that the Supernatural Brownies are not quite supernatural. My new verdict: these are fantastic 'base' brownies. They are easy to prepare and not overwhelmingly rich, practically begging for the company of caramel, peanut butter, candy, etc. Turn to this recipe when you feel like experimenting; you'll feel no great loss if you ruin a batch.

I was not content to test only Moskin's favorite brownie recipe; I also baked a pan of the New Classic and French Chocolate Brownies, and both had more personality than the Supernatural Brownies. Deserving as they are of their own posts, I invite you to revisit Brownie or Die and see how the New York Times' three 'best' brownies compare in a brutal tête-à-tête.

Disclaimer: I apologize for my painfully mediocre photography skills - made worse by general fatigue and time constraints - which do none of these brownies justice.