Flourless Chocolate Brownies

The other weekend, I was invited to a dinner party. The hostess said "oh, don't bring anything", but I can't just do that. It's way too weird. So I decided to bring desserts (I don't think they're big drinkers, so the standard bottle of wine wasn't my first choice).

First I made some Double White Chocolate and Pretzel Peanut Butter Cookies with Sea Salt, which is a recipe I absolutely adore and have made many many times. It's from the ever-awesome Picky-Palate.com.  Then I had a moment of sheer panic, what if someone at the party couldn't eat peanuts? What if someone has a gluten allergy? I don't wanna be THAT guy (girl, whatever), so I browsed through my pantry trying to find something, anything else I could make. A second batch of cookies seemed weird, and I didn't have enough chocolate chips left anyway, but I had a big bar of dark chocolate in my freezer which I could use to make chocolate chunks. OR..... BROWNIES.

Definitely brownies.

But I didn't have all the ingredients for my mother's brownie recipe, so I hit the internet and found this recipe, also from Picky-Palate.com  then I cut it down because I only had 2 eggs left.

Flourless Chocolate Brownies
3 1/2 oz dark chocolate
1/3 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs, at room temperature
1/3 cup cocoa powder (unsweetened, for baking)
icing sugar, to decorate

1. Preheat oven to 375F/185C.
2. Break chocolate into smallish chunks.
3. Start a double boiler.  I use a small sauce pan with a pyrex bowl ontop. It's heatsafe and easy to clean. Make sure the water isn't touching the bottom of the bowl if you use this method.
4. Put butter and chocolate in double boiler, stir until melted.
5. Set aside and let cool for 5-10 minutes (put in a clean mixing bowl if you've used a real double boiler, otherwise your pyrex bowl will be fine).
6. Using a wire whisk, add eggs, sugar and cocoa to chocolate and stir until combined.
7. Pour into cake tin/slice pan/pie dish (I used a pyrex pie dish).
8. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until done.
9. Let sit to cool for 10-15 minutes.
10. I recommend either using or creating a stencil and decorating with icing sugar once it's cooled. To create a stencil, take a clean piece of paper, fold it and cut out designs as if you're back in kindergarten making snowflakes with your safety scissors. Place the stencil on top of room-temperature brownies. Lightly sprinkle icing sugar on top of stencil (I used a sifting sieve to get even distribution) and then remove stencil and ooh and ahh at your beautiful design.

Note: this does not rise. So, use a pan or tin that will give you your desired thickness. This recipe, in a 9" pie tin, was about 1/2-3/4" thick.  And sinfully delicious.

People will tell you that you can add raisins or nuts to your brownies, but I never do. Mostly because raisins don't belong in brownies and I don't really like nuts in anything.

Sorry that there are no pictures of this, but I was in such a rush that the brownies only came out of the oven about 5 minutes before we left the house, and then they got eaten.

And FYI - I have another blog post (for more unhealthy desserts) in the queue, it should go up later today or tomorrow.  I haven't been posting because I've been boring in the kitchen lately. Or rather, I've been revisiting recipes. I made another two batches of focaccia, using a slightly different recipe for my office. It was a hit.  I also made a batch of mini-bagels last night, to go with breakfast for dinner.  But I'm afraid it's mostly been straight forward pasta or steamed veg with grilled meat. Nothing worth writing home about, or blogging about I suppose.