I am re-posting this after taking my original post down. I recently received a letter from a law firm in the US asking me to remove all reference to my original title for this recipe as it was copyrighted – whoops! So here goes again….
I recently came across two words in a cooking magazine I had never seen together before – brownie and brittle. I was intrigued.
I looked online and discovered Brownie Brittle came about after a woman, who baked brownies for a living, loved the crisp edges. She wanted to get a whole batch of crisp brownie edges and came up with a recipe.
It sounded delicious, all that chocolate brownie goodness with a satisfying crunch. I set about looking for a recipe and found a few online.
My first attempt was a recipe which just used boxed brownies. I made up the batch, spread it out in the recommended size pan and – wah wah! Just brownies which were a bit less deep than normal.
I took these into the office for my co-workers to share, as they still tasted good. But it wasn’t what I was after. I was describing them to folk saying they were like brownies only with sort of a biscotti crunch to them. Then it hit me – why not do as biscotti says – it’s the Italian for twice baked. Twice baking biscotti gives it that hard crunchy edge. So perhaps it would make my brownies krisp?
That Saturday, I whipped up a batch of ingredients which I had tweaked from a few other websites. Baked it once, broke it into shards and baked it again. The result? Lovely crisp, crunchy brownies. Result! Here’s how I made them;
Ingredients:125 ml vegetable oil2 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder115 grams granulated sugar½ teaspoon vanilla extract1 medium egg35 grams plain flour25 – 50 grams plain chocolate chips
Method:Preheat your oven to 190oC. Line a large cookie sheet with greaseproof paper and set aside.
In a bowl, mix together the oil, cocoa, sugar, vanilla and egg with a whisk until smooth. Add the flour and stir through until just combined.
Spoon the mixture out onto the prepared cookie sheet, to about a ¼ inch thick. The mixture is sticky so may need some encouragement with an off-set spatula. Persevere. Lastly sprinkle on the choc chips, evenly over the brownie mix. Place into the oven for 10 minutes. Remove and place on a cooling rack. Allow to cool completely.
When cool, after about an hour, remove the greaseproof paper from the brownie krisp. It should start to break up at this point. Line the cookie sheet with another piece of greaseproof paper and place the broken bits of brownie krisp onto it. Place back into the oven for 8 minutes and remove immediately. Place back on the cooling rack and allow to cool completely again.
There you have brownie krisp – looks like thin brownie, tastes like brownie, with none of the gooey texture. Instead a crisp, dare I say, brittle texture. I used plain chocolate chips, but you could change things up with toffee bits, peanut butter chips, mint chips, nuts, it’s up to you!
It’s very satisfying with a cup of coffee. If you make, I hope you enjoy!