Description:
Hmmm brownies... this is one of my favourite sweet desserts. There are many types of brownies, from the cakey, the gooey, the fudgy, mixture of some and so on. I like the gooey with a little bit of cake texture brownie. If you've tried the brownies from Famous Amos, that's the brownies that I love. The brownies were soft and just melted in my mouth.

After browsing several recipes in the internet, I chose to try Pennylane Brownies recipe since there have been several people trying it. Also, there was quite a good review.

I changed some of the ingredients because I love butter and I want to finish off some of the bits and pieces in my pantry.;-p Finally, the brownie is done and I've tried it. The crumb is quite moist as I like. Not bad at all but it is still not exactly what I want. The brownies do not have strong chocolatey taste and less gooey. I'm not sure whether I overmixed it or it's just the recipe. I might adjust slightly the ingredients to amplify the chocolate aroma and the gooeyness (if there is such word for this).

Ingredients:
Here are the ingredients which I used for this brownies:

4 eggs, extra large 59 g min mass
450 g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla concentrated extract, Queen's

60 g cocoa powder, Home Brand 16% fat
210 g all purpose flour
0.5 tsp salt

100 g unsalted butter, melted
125 g olive oil, extra light (not extra virgin!!!)

60 g macadamia nuts, halves
60 g hazelnut, dry roasted

20 g white chocolate chips, Nestle bites
20 g dark chocolate chips, Nestle bites


Directions:
Place a layer of baking paper on the tin. Preheat the oven to 180 deg C.

Sieve and mix dry ingredients well.

Beat eggs, sugar and vanilla until the mixture is fluffy. Add dry ingredients, mix well. Add oil, mix well. Then, add nuts and chocolate chips, mix well.

Pour the batter to the tin. Bake for about 30-35 minutes. When the surface start cracking/drying, stop the baking process.

This cake is the second challenge for KBB. The original recipe and the baking instructions are from Cuisine by Penny Oliver (2005).

Cake:
4 eggs, ¾ cup caster sugar, 2/3 cup flour (all-purposed), 1/3 cup
cornflour, 1 tsp baking powder

Beat the eggs with an electric beater until very thick and fluffy.
Slowly add the sugar and continue beating until the mixture becomes
white and very thick. Sift all the dry ingredients together and gently
fold them into the egg mixture. Pour the cake mixture into a buttered
and floured 26-28cm spring form cake tin. Bake in a preheated oven at
190C for 25-30 minutes. Turn the cake onto a rack and cool. Transfer
the sponge to a serving plate. Fix a fold of strong tin foil around the cake to form a collar, ready to receive the chocolate mousse mixture.

 

Mousse:
250g cooking chocolate, 6 egg yolks, 250g soft butter, 6 egg whites

Melt the chocolate over hot water. Beat the egg yolks and blend with
the chocolate to mix well. Beat in the softened butter. Beat the egg
whites stiff to the stiff peak stage. Fold the stiffly beaten egg
whites into the chocolate mixture. Pour the chocolate mixture over the
cake. Cover and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.

Note :

For mousse you can mix with some flavours like frangelico, cointreau, brandy, vanilla etc,

Egg whites you can replace with thickened cream and garnish with your taste…!!

 

Topping:
300ml cream, whipped, 100g cooking chocolate melted with 50ml of cream
and 3 Tbs of brandy

Cover the cake with whipped cream and drizzle over a little melted,
flavoured chocolate. With each slice of cake serve a little extra
flavoured, melted chocolate on the side.

 

 

Here is half of the recipe and including the extras.

 

Sponge cake:

2 eggs

125 g sugar

40 g all purpose flour

20 g corn flour

½ tsp baking powder

+ 1 tsp vanilla extract

 

Chocolate mousse:

125 g chocolate (25 g 85% Lindt chocolate + 100 g Cadbury milk chocolate chips)

3 yolks

125 g reduced salt butter

3 whites

+ 8 tsp Cointreau

+ 1 tsp cocoa de liquor

 

Topping:

200 mL whipping cream, Bulla

+ ¼ tsp gelatine powder (the idea was from Diana's dessert)

+ ½ tsp vanilla extract

+ 1 Tbsp icing sugar

 

100 g Cadbury milk chocolate chips

50 mL whipping cream

 

+ glace cherries

 

 

      

 

• Since the quantity is slightly on the bigger portion for us, I halved the quantity of the original recipe. I used spring form tin with 20.5 cm in diameter.
• At 19 minutes, the cake was still wet. The total baking baking time was 24 minutes but I think it was slightly too long as the bottom of the cake was quite dark.
• I should use the side of the spring form tin to hold the baking paper. It will hold the paper tighter so that the mousse would not seep out.
• I put a little bit too much Cointreau in the mousse as I was afraid of taking raw eggs... what an excuse
• I added icing sugar and gelatine to prevent weeping whipped cream. The texture of the whipped cream is mousse like.
• I find Cadbury milk chocolate chips having better taste and flavour than Nestle brand.
• I still need to learn to decorate the cake. It's damn difficult man to do it neatly!!!

 

 

Verdicts from the testers on the cake that I made:

 

Pro:

- Nice, very velvety

- Not too sweet, just nice

 

 

Con:

- A touch too much cointreau so that the taste is overpowering the chocolate taste. However, the flavour becomes milder after 2 days.

- The sponge is slightly too dry. My colleague suggested adding some punch so it will be like tiramisu. Thus, the texture will not be too contrast.

- Slightly too sweet (I guess it depends on the preference)

 

I made this mud cake for my hubby's birthday since he requested this cake. I got the recipe from Exclusively Food by Amanda & Debbie as this recipe uses the least amount of sugar. I have checked several websites for similar cakes but those normally use about 2 cups of sugar!! However, I did not check the amount of white chocolate that is used in the other recipes when I compared the sugar. May be... the amount will be the same at the end.

I still have a very long way to go in the cake making department. Here are the incidences that I encountered when I made the cake.... The whipped cream slided towards the edge of the cake, the almond flakes were slightly burnt, the whipped cream splitted after being squeezed and squeezed in the piping bag...  Just take a close look at the photo....

Is there anybody who is willing to teach me to make and decorate cakes?

As usual, I change some of the ingredients depending on the stock in my pantry.   Here is the revised recipe.

Ingredients

300 g white chocolate, Cadbury Dream, break into smaller cubes
200 g unsalted butter, Danish style
¼ cup full cream milk powder and add water to make up to 1 cup
160 g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract, Queen's
2 eggs, lightly beaten (59g each)

250g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

 

White chocolate cream (150 g white chocolate + 60 mL thickened cream, melt over bain-marie and mix)

Raffaello

Roasted flake almonds

Whipped cream

Raspberry sauce

 

 

Cooking Methods

 

1. Grease and line a 20 cm round cake tin.
2. Combine flours in a medium bowl.
3. Put chocolate, butter, milk and sugar in a bowl and heat over a bain-marie over low heat, stirring occasionally. When mixture is completely smooth remove from heat and allows cooling for 15 minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 160^oCelsius (convection) after finish mixing the chocolate mixture. Add vanilla and eggs to the chocolate mixture and mix to combine.
5. Add one cup of chocolate mixture and stir until smooth. Repeat with another cup of the chocolate mixture then stir in remaining chocolate mixture. This method of combining the wet and dry ingredients helps prevent lumps (I used a strainer to remove the remaining lumps).
6. Pour mixture into tin and bake for about 1 hour and 10 minutes. When the cake is ready, a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake should come out without any batter attached.
7. Cover cake with a tea towel and allow it to cool to room temperature in tin.
8. When cake is cold, spread with white chocolate cream.
9. Store cake in refrigerator and bring to room temperature before serving.
   

I'll let you know the taste tomorrow coz I have to wait till dinner time.

 

Up-date on 19 Aug 07:

Finally, I got to try it... the taste is nice and not too sweet... but the texture is nothing like at the picture from the original source. It's fudgy instead of cake like.

Not sure where I went wrong.