Brownies from Amy's Bread and Peanut Butter Cookies from Baked

Tuesday was our last class of the 4-week Ethics course I was taking, which turned out better than I thought it would be. I baked for the once-weekly class, at first because we didn't get dinner (budget downsizing), but later we got some pizza, so it was just for fun after that...

The first week, I went back to my beloved Cooks Illustrated choco chip cookies, and I also threw in some Mayan Chocolate Cookies from Robin Hood (a flour company) that I had frozen dough from awhile ago. The second week, I made the Samoa copycat cookies from Oatmeal Cookie Guy, which got rave reviews from my classmates and some requested it again for the next week, so I obliged.

And for the last week, I decided to try some new things from those famous bakeries I blathered on about in my last entry (have you watched that SNL rap about macking on Magnolia cupcakes yet? if not, you really should...).

The first item was brownies from scratch! Despite years of making cookies and cakes now, this was the first time I'd ever attempted to make brownies not-from-a-box. Partly it's that I don't eat that many brownies, and there are a couple mixes out there that I tried out of curiosity the last few times I made brownies (e.g. No-Pudge brownies). I'd grown up with Duncan Hines brownies, so I really hadn't had that much experience with "bakery-quality" or "bake-sale" brownies, and thus I don't have any idea what a good homemade brownie is supposed to taste like...which is akin to me trying to make Thai curry before ever eating it at a restaurant, and once I did, I realized that I was making my curry poorly...but I would have never known!

But I digress. Bake or Break (yes, I like this blog, have you noticed? haha) made brownies recently, and discussed her astonished realization that there were people out there who had never tasted a homemade brownie. Since I was one of those people, I figured that if she, who has made many homemade brownies, recommended this brownie to make as a gold standard of a good brownie, that this was a good place to start. Amy's Bread is a famous New York bakery that started back in the early 90's and has grown considerably since then. They started out exclusively with savory European style breads, but they've expanded to include simple, classic desserts and treats that they are now known for as much as or even more so than their breads. And these are their brownies.

"Award-winning Brownies" (adapted from The Sweeter Side of Amy's Bread and Bake or Break)

Ingredients:

3 & 1/3 cups (20 ounces) semisweet chocolate (chips or chopped), divided in half
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate (chips or chopped)
1 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup & 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 & 3/4 cups chopped nuts, toasted (optional; I used pecans)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease a 9″x 13″ baking pan. Line bottom of pan with parchment paper.

Melt butter, half of the semi-sweet chocolate, and the unsweetened chocolate in a double boiler (or microwave) in short increments (30 sec to 1 min) until just melted, stirring occasionally. Cool to lukewarm or else you'll fry your eggs when you add them in next.

Whisk sugar, eggs, and vanilla just until mixed. Over-mixing will cause crumbly brownies. Fold in warm chocolate mixture.

Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Fold dry ingredients into chocolate mixture until just combined. Stir in remaining chocolate chips and nuts (if using), mixing just until combined.

Pour batter into prepared pan. Spread to an even thickness. Bake 32-36 minutes. The edges will be slightly firm and the center will be soft when they are fully baked. The center will jiggle slightly when you shake the pan. Do not overbake. Cool completely in pan on wire rack.

Makes 12 large or 24 small brownies. These brownies may cut better if they are chilled first.*

*DPLK Note: YOU MUST CHILL FOR SEVERAL HOURS BEFORE CUTTING. This is recommended in the original recipe, but in my experience, they are impossible to get out of the pan in one piece even when cooled to room temperature, and the brownies were delicious the first day, but light and fluffy and crumbly, not dense and fudgy and intense like they should be and were the next morning after a night of chilling in the fridge. Not only will they taste correct, but the chocolate and crumb will have solidified and the brownies will be firm enough to take out of the pan in one piece!

Reviews: Michael says that these brownies "actually taste like there's chocolate in them" as opposed to box brownies, which he never really were fond of. My labmates and classmates gave thumbs-up to these brownies, declaring them "intense" and "delicious" and "really chocolatey." One modification I made was that I interpreted "semi-sweet" chocolate loosely and put in really dark chocolate instead (a mix of 60-70% cacao chocolates), and I went out to the fancy chocolate store this past weekend and bought about almost $40 worth of good chocolate for baking, a little of which went into these brownies. Basically, good chocolate in, great brownies out. Don't think those Nestle semi-sweet chips are going to cut it if you want the real thing.

Figure 1. Brownies just out of the oven. I put the nuts after pouring the batter in the pan so I could leave a portion for those anti-nut people.

Figure 2. A stack of decadent brownies...

And second up was these peanut butter cookies, which looked soooo good at Phe.MOM.enon. These are from a hip bakery in NYC called Baked. Their brownies got a lot of press because Oprah said she liked them very much...but here are their cookies, which are delicious, so the brownies may be worth the hype to look into for the future.

Peanut Butter Cookies with Milk Chocolate Chunks (adapted from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking and Phe.MOM.enon)

Ingredients:

1 & 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar, plus more for sprinking
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup creamy peanut butter
6 ounces good milk chocolate, coarsely chopped

Instructions:

Sift the flour, baking soda and salt into a medium bowl and set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer with paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Scrape down the bowl and add the eggs, one at a time, beating until each one is incorporated. The mixture will look light and fluffy.

Add the vanilla and the peanut butter and beat until just incorporated.

Add half of the flour mixture and mix for 15 seconds. Add the remaining flour mixture and mix until just incorporated.

Using a spatula or wooden spoon, fold in the chocolate. Cover the bowl tightly and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Drop the dough by rounded tablespoons onto the prepared baking sheets at least 2 inches apart.

Flatten each cookie down a bit with your hands or a sugared flat surface (e.g. bottom of a glass) to make fat disks. Sprinkle the tops of the cookies with a little granulated sugar and bake for 10 to 12 minutes until the tops of the cookies just begin to brown. Watch them carefully, they get really thin so they can toast up too brown quick if you don't watch your time.

Remove the pan from the oven and cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Use a spatula to transfer the individual cookies to the rack to cool completely.

DPLK Note: I got about 4 dozen cookies out of this, even though the original said about 2 dozen, so I must have made mine smaller...you can freeze prepared balls of dough and bake direct from freezer (just add a few min of baking time) if you can't get through that many cookies at once.

Reviews: These cookies were also very well received. They were thin and crispy on the edges while with a little bit of chew in the center. Not very strong PB flavor, which is good for a wider audience. The milk chocolate in this goes better than dark, I've read, so stick with the milk chocolate...

Figure 3. Peanut butter cookies on the cooling rack.

Figure 4. Brownies and cookies ready for class!