Traditional American pastry has quickly gained popularity around the world. This recipe, with its unusual technology for us, seems to American housewives to be a familiar and simple affair, like cooking pancakes for us. Maybe the “import” name confuses us? Out of habit, it seems that a foreign one is something very outlandish? If you just call this dessert a chocolate cake, then the timidity of our housewives will immediately disappear. Oh, something that, and we can do pies.
Of course, there is one small trick in the recipe of chocolate pies by American technology - not without it. But this secret is not difficult to solve. Learn all about the intricacies of cooking “Brownies”, so that every weekend a delicious and fast-to-prepare dessert gathers relatives and friends at the table.
Brownie cake - basic technological principles
Chocolate confectionery, in fact, there is quite a lot. Chocolate or cocoa in the dough - no longer new, and in this matter, “Brownie” is no different from other chocolate desserts. A traditional American cake could be called a regular chocolate sponge cake if it were not for one highlight in its cooking technology.
Please note that the brownie dough contains a lot of sugar. This overkill is not accidental. When baking, sugar forms a dense caramel crust on the surface, and in the inner layers of the dough, it melts and turns into a stretching texture. Therefore, the classic “brownie” has, as it were, a double texture: it is baked from above, but remains moist inside.
Considering that the word “brownie” in translation from English is brown, it is quite possible to leave chocolate color and taste in baking, but to reduce its sweetness to the usual norm. The wet texture inside the cake will disappear, baking will become more dense and springy. But for the “Brownie” cake it is not so terrible, because the technology of making cakes allows you to give the dessert the necessary moisture with the use of impregnation and creams. That is, the “Brownie” cake, in all its variations, is in fact a chocolate dessert that every confectioner can easily prepare. Creative imagination in the pastry craft is always welcome.
1. Cake “Brownie” with cherries - a festive recipe
Before you start cooking, note that chocolate must be natural. For a richer brown cake, if desired, replace a part of the flour with two or three tablespoons of natural cocoa powder.
Product Composition:
Oil 340 g
Flour 100 g
Eggs 4 pcs.
Sugar 400 g
Salt
Chocolate, baking 240 g
Rum 75 ml
Vanilla essence
For cream:
Cocoa mass 300 g
Oil 150 g
Vanilla or rum extract
For the glaze:
Cream 280g
Chocolate 400 g
And:
Cherry jam 100 g
Cocktail Cherry to decorate the surface
Natural Chocolate 100 g
Cooking Technology:
Melt butter and chocolate. It is more convenient to do this in a water bath so that nothing burns. While the chocolate is melting, beat the eggs in the mixer bowl, gradually adding sugar to them. At the same time pour in rum, add salt and vanilla. Enter the warm melted chocolate, after mixing it well with butter. Sift flour or its mixture with cocoa into a liquid mass. Carefully move the dough with a spatula.
Two rectangular or square shapes of the same size grease with vegetable fat and cover with parchment. Pour the dough into the molds, dividing it in half. Put in a preheated oven (180? C).
Bake cakes for 25 minutes, and then turn off the oven, but do not open the door and do not reach for ready-made semi-finished products for another ten minutes. This baking mode will help to achieve the right consistency of the semi-finished product: outside it will become dry and baked, and inside it will be slightly wet and friable, as it should be in brownie cakes, according to American technology. After removing the cakes from the oven, transfer them to the grid together with parchment paper until it is completely cooled. Then turn the semi-finished products, carefully remove the paper, put it on a wooden board and cover it with film: let them stand for at least four hours. In the bowl of the mixer, beat the oil, aged at room temperature. Gradually add to it condensed cocoa (8.5%). Cocoa condensed milk can be replaced with ordinary condensed milk and cocoa powder (3-4 tablespoons with a hill). Add rum and vanilla to flavor.
The cream should be very lush, increase 2.5-3 times in volume.
Melt chocolate for icing. Pour hot cream into it and mix it quickly. Bring glaze to a boil and remove from heat.
At the beginning of the cooled cakes grease with cherry jam. You can add a little rum to it. Fasten them with chocolate butter cream, stacked on top of each other. Align the surface and hold the cake in the refrigerator for a bit to make the cream freeze. Cover with chocolate icing, pouring it into the center of the cake and gently spreading it with a spatula across the surface and sides of the cake. Let the cake freeze again. Put it on a pedestal, put a markup on top: easily draw rectangles or squares (in portions). On these lines with cream from the pastry bag, lay the curb. In the center of each square, place a cocktail cherry and a petal or butterfly of chocolate decoration.
For decoration decorate the dark chocolate bar. On the strip of parchment, draw the desired pattern, turn it over and place it immediately on a hard surface. Along the lines of a cornet or syringe pattern, thinly apply chocolate. Transfer the chocolate patterns to freeze in the fridge, and then carefully separate from the paper. Place the decorative elements next to each cherry.
Cake can be served whole or pre-cut with a knife-knife along the lines-patterns.
2. Brownie cake - recipe for dough with cocoa and honey, no chocolate with orange Kurd
Ingredients:
Butter 180 g
Granulated sugar 220 g
Chicken eggs 2 pcs.
Vanilla extract 10 mg
Cocoa (100%) 50 g
White flour 30 g
Salt 2 g
Baking powder for dough 6 g
Honey 70 g
Powdered sugar 250 g
For Kurd:
Sweet and sour oranges 3 pcs. (medium size)
Sugar 250 g
Eggs (D-1) 3 pcs.
Butter, unsalted butter 200 g
Cooking: Preheat oven to 175? C. Grease and cover with baking paper a square shape.
Melt 110 g of butter in a large saucepan and remove from heat. Beat in eggs, sugar and half vanilla. Mix thoroughly.
Enter 1/3 cup of cocoa,? cups of flour, salt and baking powder. Stir.
Spread the batter in shape, and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, depending on the desired result. To achieve the classic version - liquid inside, crispy - on top, it will be enough 25 minutes, and for a well-cooked dough you need more time. For the cake, choose a longer baking mode, to a stable texture. Divide the semi-finished product into two shortcakes, five to six hours after exposure.
Prepare a citrus kurd for joining cakes. Beat eggs with sugar. Add 250 ml of orange juice. If oranges are sweet, then add a little citric acid to their juice or use lemon-orange fresh juice. Pour the juice into the egg mixture and brew for a couple until thick, stirring occasionally. Cool, add butter and whisk until creamy consistency. Grease the cakes, put them together and glaze.
To make the glaze, mix 3 tablespoons of warm butter, 3 spoons of cocoa powder, honey, vanilla extract and powdered sugar, then beat until smooth. Cover with warm glaze. Soak in the refrigerator until it solidifies.
Decorate the cake with orange candied fruit.
3. Brownie cake with butter chocolate cream in white chocolate glaze
For cake layers:
Dough - Prescription number 1 or 2
For butter cream:
Sugar 150 g
Vanilla powder 8 g
Milk, whole 80 ml
Oil 240 g
Dark chocolate 200 g
For the glaze:
Baking chocolate, white 400 g
Drinking cream 30 ml
Coconut essence 25 mg
To decorate:
Hibiscus petals
Egg white
Sugar
Almond flakes
Cooking Technology:
Knead the dough for the cake according to any of the two recipes suggested above. The highlight of this recipe is that thin cakes are baked - no more than 0.5 cm thick. White - chocolate glaze blends harmoniously into the overall taste, but at the same time covers the dark brown colors of the cake with its whiteness: when sliced, this contrast looks unexpectedly and brightly, truly festive. Pour dough into a prepared square shape, bake for no more than five minutes. Do not forget under each cake to cover the form with oiled parchment: it is better to prepare sheets of paper of the desired size in advance. The number of cakes does not matter. Carefully separate the semi-finished products from the paper, put them in a stack, smearing each of them with chocolate butter cream.
If the cakes turn out to be accidentally overdried when baking, sprinkle them with any dessert wine, fruit juice or sugar syrup - the cake will acquire additional pleasant tones of taste.
For cream:
Heat the chocolate in a water bath to a creamy consistency by adding milk. Cool at room temperature to 20-25? C.
Whip butter with refined sugar until cream is obtained. Add flavor, gradually pour in the chocolate, while continuing to beat.
Use the finished cream to combine the cake layers and level the entire surface of the cake. Clean to freeze in the fridge.
Make white chocolate frosting:
Crush chocolate in a crumb, pour in it heated cream. If the chocolate is not melted to the end, heat the mass to a couple until completely dissolved. Add coconut essence. Stir until smooth. Cool for two hours at 4-10 ° C, then beat until a thick, snow-white consistency is obtained. Completely cover the cake with white icing.
For decor, take the petals of hibiscus or other edible flowers (feel free to use the flowers of any medicinal plants). Cover the surface of the petals with whipped protein with a brush. Sprinkle with sugar or coconut chips and dry on a napkin. Place the petals on the cake. Sprinkle with almond dessert.
4. Brownie cake in a slow cooker
Ingredients:
30 g cereal, semolina
50 g flour, wheat flour
3 eggs, dietary
90 ml of milk
6 g instant coffee
30 g cocoa (100% powder)
240 g sugar
4 g vanilla
200 g butter, cream
320 g baking chocolate
5 g of fine salt
30 ml of vegetable oil
Cooking:
Baking chocolate (droplets) and butter dissolve in a water bath, stirring occasionally. Dissolve coffee in hot milk.
Manka combine with flour, vanilla powder, cocoa; mix it up.
Beat the eggs, gradually adding salt and sugar. Please note that a large amount of sugar in the dough is necessary to get a dry crust outside, and inside - a moist and stretching texture. In some recipes, it is indicated that it is enough just to mix the eggs, but in this case, a slightly unbaked cake will cool down, thicken, completely lose volume, the necessary texture will be broken.
In a beaten egg mass, enter the coffee with milk, without stopping the operation of the mixer.
Add a thin stream of melted chocolate and butter to the dough. The mixer can be turned off.
Continue to work with the spatula: enter the prepared dry mixture in small parts, and mix it until a homogeneous mass, with upward movements, rotating the container with your other hand.
Cover the bottom of the multicooker with baking paper greased with vegetable oil. Pour the dough into the bowl. The traditional “Brownies” are baked in rectangular and square shapes in the oven, but when using a multicooker, there is no need to keep track of the duration and temperature of baking. Set the timer to 25 minutes, in “baking” mode.
Get out of the bowl and cut the cake better after cooling. Pour hot chocolate in portions and sprinkle with nuts.
5. Brownie cake - a vegetarian recipe
Ingredients:
Baking powder 25 g
Flour 240 g
Sugar, refined 350 g
Cocoa 100 g
Walnut oil (any) 200 g
Salt 5 g
Coconut milk 150 ml
Cream (33%) 250 g
Vanilla 6g
Baking chocolate 200 g
Instant coffee 4 g
Crushed nuts (for sprinkling) 150 g
Cooking Technology:
Beat the oil at high speed until it forms a fluffy, light and frothy mass. When whisking, it is better to use a knife nozzle, which will better grind large fat molecules, which will make it possible, in conjunction with coconut milk, to obtain a thick emulsion. Pour the coconut milk in small portions, without stopping the beating and reducing the speed. In deep dishes combine the dry ingredients of the dough, after sifting flour and cocoa. Make a well and pour in the liquid emulsion, mixing the dough with a spatula until the dough is not lumpy. Pour the dough into a pre-cooked mold, greased with vegetable fat and lined with paper.
Bake for half an hour (+/- 5 minutes) at 180? C.
Melt chocolate. Beat the chilled cream until thick, adding melted warm chocolate at the end. Stir it with cream with a spatula until a smooth color. For more rich brown cream in hot chocolate, add instant coffee, 1-2 teaspoons.
Cover the cakes with cream and sprinkle with nuts.
6. Brownie cake - chocolate cheesecake with prunes and nuts
Product List:
Eggs 4 pcs.
Oil 180 g
Cottage cheese, fatty 0.5 kg
Cocoa (100%) 70 g
Vanilla sugar 12 g
Semolina 50 g
Nut flour 90 g
Baking Powder 20 g
Refined sugar 450 g
Salt
Wheat flour 150 g
Cream cheese (any) 360 g
Dark chocolate 200 g
Essence
Prunes without stones 250 g
Oil 120 g
Apricot jam 90 g
Gelatin 40 g
Milk or drinking cream 200 g
Sugar 180 g
Cooking Technology:
Sugar, salt, cocoa, semolina, baking powder, chopped nuts and sifted wheat flour combine and mix in a deep bowl.
Beat the butter with the eggs and curd into a fluffy mass. Connect the liquid and wet parts of the dough.
Cover the bottom of a deep square baking paper and pour the dough. Bake 40-50 minutes at medium temperature. Put ready-made semi-finished product on the grid for cooling. Then put it on the dish, bottom up, remove the parchment.
Put the cooled cake in the form with a removable board. Cover with apricot jam.
In milk, dissolve gelatin and strain the mixture. In the water bath, dissolve the chocolate and butter. Add sugar. Prepared prunes cut into thin strips or cubes.
Combine warm chocolate mass with cheese, whisk until fluffy, gradually pour in milk with gelatin. Add dried fruits, essence. Curd cream souffle shift into shape. Put the cake in the refrigerator to set the cream.
You can decorate it with grated chocolate, whipped cream and jam.
Brownie Cake - Cooking Tips
Some pastry chefs claim that beating eggs for “Brownie” is not necessary. However, do not save time at this stage. It is known that when whipping egg white turns into a kind of long fibers, begins to exfoliate, and air is collected between the fibers of the whipping. For example, the classic biscuit dough does not contain leavening agents and yeast, and its fluffy and porous structure is formed, precisely due to air bubbles. Further: according to the “Brownie” technology, it is recommended to leave a little uncooked inside, and if you do not beat the eggs, then the cake immediately after cooling will quickly settle down and thicken - and this will look unattractive. The consistency of such baking will be tougher and coarser. In the whipped dough, even if it is slightly baked, outside after baking a lush, elastic and delicate texture will remain. So, be sure to beat the eggs for “Brownies” without baking powder.
