A week or two ago I picked up The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook by Ina Garten after seeing it at a lower than expected price at Wal-Mart. God, is there anything that that store can’t undercut? Yeesh. Anyway, when flipping channels, if I see her show playing on the Food Network I often stop to have a look. A lot of what she does looks pretty heavy, but the presentation is often really good. I’ve been wanting to try something of hers out for a while, which was a reason of mine to get her book.
Well, the first thing I attempted from the book was her recipe for Outrageous Brownies. I saw her bake it in an episode where she was taking stuff to the beach. She baked these huge brownies and stuffed the results into Chinese take-out containers. They looked awesome. So when I saw the recipe in the desserts section of the book I was eager to give it a go. So last Saturday I went to the store and gathered all the ingredients. I was shocked at just how expensive some of these recipes can be. Seriously. With the pounds of chocolate, the walnuts, butter, and vanilla the cost quickly went up. Luckily the recipe has a high yield, but man it’s something that I can’t do all that often.
Putting it all together was pretty simple. The chocolate and butter mixture was all velvety smooth and shiny. I’d never really played with melting chocolate in the past so this was pretty awesome. I followed the recipe pretty closely, except for the fact that I used 6 large eggs instead of the 6 extra-large eggs that were needed. I didn’t think it would be that much of an issue. Seeing it all come together gave me a certain amount of joy. There’s this underlying creative force that happens with baking that’s really rewarding if you let it happen. When I put it in the oven I was waiting with excitement to see how it all turned out. Well, when it came out, it was kind of duller than I expected in comparison to some of the other store-bought brownies. After cutting it up, each piece was really quite crumbly. I was expecting it to be rather fudgy, but instead it came out like a bit of a dry cake. Sure, it tasted awesome, but the consistency and look wasn’t right. I was rather disappointed but decided not to blame the recipe.
Anyway, today we have a get together at our house, so I thought it was a great chance to give it all another go. I follow the recipe as closely as possible again, but this time I used 7 eggs instead of 6. I figured that the extra egg would make up for the lack in size. Again, it all came together pretty easily. When I pulled the result out of the oven I was in total shock. The crust was all shiny and really gleamed under the stove lights. See, this was the look I was going for. After cooling down, I had a bite and daaaamn was it good.
I cut it all up and set up a nice pile for the guests. So far everyone that’s eaten a piece has complimented me on it. So yeah, Barefoot’s Outrageous Brownies were a success for me. I’m not going to post the recipe here (ask me if you want), but I can at least say that if you do pick up the recipe it will turn out rather well. I will at least post some pics here showing the progress during baking.
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.
Possibly related posts:
2 comments
Black Prophet says:
Sun. May 18, 2008 at 6:27 pm (UTC -5 )
Yeah thats the difference between baking and cooking. You have to follow the exact recipe in baking, cause one inexact measurement will make it turn out totally wrong.
Jay says:
Sun. May 18, 2008 at 6:48 pm (UTC -5 )
That’s true. Although, in baking I think there comes a point where you can differentiate between what can and can’t be varied. When you’re able to recognize that, that’s where you can start getting all creative. Ever seen Chef at Home with Michael Smith? Having that level of proficiency and confidence to work without the strict guidelines of a strict recipe would be something I want to achieve.