You’ve been baking brownies wrong – chef tips make them ‘perfect’ every time
If you began to bake during the last coronavirus lockdown you may have perfected your sourdough.
But, something people rarely think about is how to make the best brownies.
After all, usually a box mix will make a tasty enough chocolate treat.
However, there are things you can do to make your brownies absolutely perfect.
They’ll be so tasty that brownies may just become your signature pudding.
And, we all know how well a warm brownie goes with ice cream after a meal. The kids will be in heaven!
What's your favourite thing to add to chocolate brownies? Let us know in the comments…
Chefs Florence and Darren from Hoxton Bakehouse shared some clever tricks for upping your baking game.
The bakers said: “When making brownies, we mix everything by hand rather than a machine to avoid over mixing and adding too much air to the mix.
“It makes the perfect brownie every time!
“Always use steam when baking as this helps the starches on the surface of the dough caramelise during baking.
“If you're at home you can create steam with ice cubes in the bottom of the oven in a tray.”
Meanwhile, we all know that a bake can be ruined when you don’t have the right ingredients.
Florence and Darren had some easy swaps and adjustments to keep your brownies perfect.
They said: “If you only have salted butter just take away the salt percentage found in the butter from the amount needed in the recipe
“If you have allergies you can make easy substitution and you can do the same if you are out of certain ingredients in the house!
“You can swap milk for alternative milk, butter for coconut oil or peanut butter, plain flour for rice flour.
“Egg can be swapped with apple sauce or linseed which has been soaked and blitzed.”
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One final tip comes from Pastry chef extraordinaire Alice Medrich who says you should always use cocoa and not chocolate in brownies.
She wrote in Food 52: “Brownies made with cocoa can have very deep chocolate flavour and still retain a softer and moister texture than an equally chocolatey brownie made with a bar of chocolate.”
This is because when using cocoa you need to replace the fat from the chocolate with butter.
In chocolate, the fat is usually cocoa butter which firms up when it gets to room temperature.
This means when the brownies are ready to eat they’ll be dry and hard, unlike the butter and cocoa brownies which will remain tender.
You can still stir through chocolate chips or scatter them on top of your brownies though for yummy pockets of pure chocolate.
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