Passionfruit Butter

Good adjectives to describe men and brownies.

Falling apart. If you want to avoid this outcome, wait longer than two minutes to cut your brownies after taking them out of the oven.

My first go with this recipe was a miniature disaster. My friend Chris Struck, who calls himself Food Dude and may choose two of the aforementioned positively connoting adjectives for himself as a token of my gratitude for this recipe, is a culinary student at Johnson & Wales. He’s not half bad (um, hello, internship at Craft; cooking with the contestants from Top Chef New York at a James Beard dinner), so when he passed his recipe for brownies along to me, I sat up straight and knew I had to make them.

The big red figurative warning sign came at the part that explicitly instructed me to add eggs, along with sugar and vanilla, into butter that has been melting in a saucepan over low heat. But then, since baking often leaves so little room to improvise, I figured this was a deliberate decision based on the kind of knowledge you don’t acquire until culinary school. I added the eggs and brandished my whisk, beating them vigorously so as not to scramble the eggs.

I soon found myself with a rich, fragrant yellow custard-like concoction, studded with delicate fragments of scrambled egg. And that’s how I landed myself a gig as the scribe for whatever cookbooks lie in Chris’ future; with his culinary ingenue and my meticulous attention to precision and detail, every recipe will be a winner. We’ll start with this one, whose technical errors I have rectified. But the pint of butter and the 8 eggs? That’s all Chris. Don’t blame me for a second. And yes, this WILL make enough brownies for you to distribute throughout the Superdome at the Saints’ first playoff game on the 16th. Or you can make them next time you have a bunch of people over, since the yield is basically endless. OR you can do what I did and just hoard them and experiment with different sauces and toppings, such as…

Dark chocolate toffee. I got super-lazy and just melted a square of Ghirardelli’s Toffee Interlude [EDIT: dumbest name for a candy bar ever?] over a brownie, but you can go wild. Toffee anything is sure to please.

Raspberry coulis. In a saucepan, bring two cups of raspberries (frozen is great and cheap for this) to a mellow boil with two tablespoons of lemon juice and sugar to taste. Stir until it’s smooth and thick – my first batch was a bit thin, probably a result of my haste in getting it off the stovetop and into my mouth. Just stay the course and brave those extra minutes (not that a thin coulis is a huge problem; you still get a nice wallop of raspberry flavor, it’s just not quite as pretty or tame when you get around to plating). Strain in a fine-mesh sieve. You’ll wind up with a glorious, tart concoction that perfectly balances the density of the brownies. This is such an easy thing to make (I’ve heard you can even make a heatless rendition by tossing everything into a food processor, but I’m a bit old-fashioned for that), and next time, I might try it with blackberries or blueberries instead.

Nutella whipped cream. I can’t figure out why, but this doesn’t look as frothy as it was – maybe harsh lighting? In any case, this is HEAVEN not just for brownies, but for anything: what isn’t made better by Nutella? what isn’t made better by whipped cream? The offspring of the two is STELLAR. In a cold metal bowl, whip a pint of heavy whipping cream on high. When it’s just started to thicken, add a heaping spoonful of Nutella. Mix and taste. I really have no method to this, so it’s best to wing it – which in this case means just mixing and tasting, mixing and tasting, until you’ve found that perfect balance. What I love about this is that the airiness of the whipped cream keeps the Nutella from being as sticky-sweet as it is on its own. I found that the nuttiness stood out more than the chocolatiness, which made the taste of the whipped cream unbelievable, especially spooned over the piping-hot mess-of-a-brownie pictured at the top of this post.

In the spirit of the holidays, you could also spoon on a bit of homemade peppermint ice cream (a post on that coming soon) or just dust them with finely crushed peppermints. If you crave saltiness alongside sweetness, go with salted caramel or crushed pretzels. The possibilities go as far as your tastes (and your appetite).

Please make these brownies! They have none of the tacky consistency that comes from boxed brownies, and thanks to an ungodly amount of chocolate (and of basically every other ingredient) are in fact almost like a flourless chocolate cake on the richness scale – though the flour gives them a delicacy and texture that keeps them from sliding into fudge territory.

CHRIS’ RIDICULOUS BROWNIES
2 cups butter
3.5 cups sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla
8 eggs, slightly beaten
2 cups all-purpose or unbleached flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon salt
8 ounces semi-sweet baking chocolate squares, coarsely chopped
8 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate squares, coarsely chopped

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Go easy on yourself and melt the butter in the microwave.
3. In a large bowl, mix the melted butter with sugar, vanilla, and eggs; blend well.
4. Sift and stir in flour, cocoa, and salt; mix until just combined.
5. In 25-second intervals, melt chocolate in a microwave, stirring each time until completely smooth.
6. Mix this in with the rest of the batter until fully incorporated.
7. Liberally grease a 15×10-inch pan (yes, you heard me) with nonstick cooking spray.
8. Pour batter into pan and bake until set (about 35 minutes).