Quick Crackly Top Brownies

These brownies are so simple and so quick to put together it seems almost impossible how perfectly they turn out every time I’ve made them. These are super fudgy, yet managing to stay quite light, lusciously chocolatey with a lingering depth of flavour added by the coffee in it, and with that most sought after meringue like crackle topping which this recipe delivers with effortless ease each time. And it all comes together in minutes with nothing more than your food processor! I do actually think twice before I make these because of how dangerously easy it is to finish an entire tray in one sitting. You have been warned.

I developed this recipe specifically to meet my criteria for a Perfect Brownie.

• they had to be quick;

• had to be food processor friendly;

• had to be light but fudgy;

• have dark, deep chocolate flavour and be less sugary-sweet than the average brownie

• & they absolutely had to have a clearly defined cracked-top layer; a marked separation, both in colour and texture, from the darker, fudgier base of the brownie.

So here are my tried and true tips for always getting these super simple brownies to turn out just so, from the first time you bake them.

I bake mine with my homemade cultured vegan butter, but feel free to use whatever good cultured butter you have and use regularly. When it comes to baking, the flavour of the butter I use, with a good balance of acidity to sweetness and saltiness, is something I can get pretty evangelical about. So use good butter!

Now on to the dry ingredients. I love the magic of wholewheat flour in brownies. There’s something in that increased density of wholewheat that provides just the right texture; chewy, light, and ever-so-slightly crumbly, but never venturing into cake-land. So I use all wholewheat for these beauties. But substituting up to 50% in standard/all purpouse flour will not change the texture much, so feel free to do so if you wish. Also, I add the smallest pinch of baking powder to mine, which adds the tiniest bit of height to these brownies without, again, resulting in a cakey texture. And the final little ingredient, that I just can’t do without in these, is the instant coffee; the flavour of it is never obvious in the finished brownie, yet it seems to sit behind the chocolate, lending a lingering, dark and refined depth to the final delicious result

And the chocolate, I always use whatever I happen to have around-melting beads, slabs, kisses, dops- a mix of anything that has a minimum of 70% cocoa solids. So let’s move quickly along to some technique notes, so that you can stop reading and get baking. The one technique we really want to pay attention to is this one; how to beat your butter, sugar and eggs to get that meringue-top crackly effect in your brownies.

I begin by creaming the butter and sugar in the food processor, together with the vanilla, until it starts to look quite creamy, but not quite pale. I find using caster sugar helps this stage to go a lot faster, and helps the food processor to incorporate the sugar fully through the butter.

Once it’s creamed, I add both eggs in at once. Now this is where the magic happens. You need to let the eggs, butter, and sugar mixture run for at least 2 minutes, stopping only once or twice to scrape the sides down if you must. It’s the action of beating the eggs really well, till the mixture reaches that almost-ribbon stage similar to when making a genoise sponge, that allows this partial meringue to form that much sought-after crust that sits on top of the denser brownie layer. With the magic of the food processor, this step takes no effort and just a couple of hot minutes to get right every time. When you lift a little mixture up with a spatula it should ribbon back down in folds, and hold the folds for a few seconds before disappearing back into the mix.

The second, and final technique to keep in mind is when adding the dry ingredients. This is where the opposite of the previous step holds true. Use the ‘Pulse’ action of your food processor to just barely combine the dry into the wet. Don’t be so fastidious as to try and get every last speck of flour and cacao mixed. Take note of the image below, and stop there. Any over-mixing at this stage will lead to too much gluten development and skew the final texture.

I like to bake mine in a half-sheet sized baking tray as I prefer my brownies to be more like ‘slices’ and less like cubes. In these shallower trays they are done in around 25 mins in a 180C/350F oven.

And that’s all folks! Now get baking, but fair warning; come to a place of complete acceptance that ‘self-restraint’ will be something you invite back in to your toolbox of virtues only after these brownies are well and truly demolished.

Recipe for Quick Crackly Top Brownies:

125g Butter

200g Caster/Extra Fine Sugar

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

2 Large Eggs

150g Dark Chocolate (at least 70% cocoa solids), melted

100g Wholewheat Flour

2 TBSP Raw Cacao Powder

1/2 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 TBSP Instant Coffee granules

2 tsp warm water

• Preheat oven to 180C/350F.

• Put the butter, sugar and vanilla extract into the bowl of your food processor, and beat continuously for about 1 minute, till creamy and most of the sugar is incorporated into the butter.

• Add both eggs in at once. Beat continuously for at least 2 minutes, till the mixture reaches ribbon stage, testing with a spatula as shown in the article above.

• Pour in the melted chocolate, and pulse a few times till mixed in.

• Add the flour, raw cacao, baking powder, and instant coffee granules into the wet mixture, and pulse two or three times, just till its all incorporated. Avoid over mixing the dry ingredients.

• Add the warm water, and give two quick pulses to lighten the batter.

• pour into your prepared baking tray or pan, and bake for 20-25 mins.

• Cool in the tray. Remove from tray and slice when fully cooled.

  
  And like I said… try not to eat the whole tray in one go.