I’ve been meaning to bake these for 5 years. Clipped from the February 2009 issue of Food & Wine magazine — Valentine’s Day seemed like the perfect occasion. Made with milk chocolate and cocoa powder, butter and eggs – these are fairly simple and quite delicious. If the milk chocolate bums you out, you should know that Rob (who doesn’t like milk chocolate) loved these. Loved. In fact, he won’t know until now (as he reads this) that they were made with milk chocolate. Unfortunately, I didn’t take the buttering and flouring of the muffin pans seriously. I was lazy. As a result, I had many broken cakes and lots of pieces. But no worries, I had plenty of
pretty ones to photograph (and eat) and Rob has since used all the pieces in his chocolate sorbet (that I also made for Valentine’s Day). He is normally left out of the cake and ice cream thing, so this was extra special for him. Don’t save these for a holiday though. They are not to hard to make and look impressive, even crumbled!
Enjoy –
warm double chocolate brownie cakes (from Food & Wine, 2009 by Emily Luchetti):
1 stick plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
5 ounces good quality milk chocolate, chopped
3 tablespoons cake flour
1/3 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 large eggs (room temp if possible)
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
vanilla ice cream…yum! (optional)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour 8 cups in a standard size muffin pan. So really butter and flour generously so they don’t stick! Like mine.
In a small saucepan, melt the butter. Add one-fifth (1 ounce) of the chopped chocolate, and mix until melted. Set aside to cool.
Whisk together the flours, cocoa powder and salt and set aside.
Beat the eggs and sugar with the whisk attachment (or with handheld beaters) at medium speed for about 5 minutes. The mixture should be pale and thick.
Beat in the vanilla extract. Remove from mixer and gently fold in chocolate/butter mixture leaving it striped with chocolate and not yet fully combined.
Fold in the flour and the remaining chopped chocolate and mix until just combined.
Spoon the cake batter into the prepared muffin pans. Bake for about 22 minutes but check often and before as usual. You want to see the cakes rise, and a little springy to the touch.
Let the cakes cool in the pan for about 15 minutes. Then gently turn them out onto a wire rack and let them cool 15 minutes longer.
Serve the cakes warm with ice cream (or chocolate sorbet!) You can also reheat them later if you want to make them in advance.
