Making Brownies With Susan Fine

Last week I made brownies with Susan Fine, of The Chocolate Path. Actually, she made them. I watched, drooled and then ate some, and some more.

I met Susan a few weeks ago when she was giving a fascinating talk on dark chocolate at the Adult School of Montclair. She is an expert on dark chocolate and has worked hard to source pure products from the best small manufacturers.

She kindly invited me into her warm, sunny kitchen and shared her chocolate brownie recipe.

Susan used a dark organic stone ground chocolate – Taza Chocolate. This is a single-origin bar made with beans from the Dominican Republic. The beans are carefully roasted and then are stone ground using antique Mexican stone mills. Finally, they are refined with pure, organic cane sugar using our unique stone roller mills to create a 60% (cocoa content) dark chocolate bar.

These brownies are the perfect antidote to bad Halloween candy. Research has shown that chocolate can lower blood pressure and is high in antioxidants, but it has to be the right kind of chocolate with a high cocoa content, not the waxy sugary stuff.

These brownies are definitely a grown-up treat although you might want to hide them from the kids as The Ladies™ were rather partial to them.

Stone ground chocolate brownie recipe

Ingredients:

• 4 oz good quality chocolate bar
• 1 cup butter
• ¾ cup plain flour sifted
• ½ tsp salt
• 4 eggs
• ¾ cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence

Preheat the oven to 375°.

Melt the butter and chocolate in a pan over a gentle heat, stirring occasionally.

Whisk the eggs with the sugar until they are foamy and lemon in color. Then stir in the vanilla essence.

Add a small amount of the chocolate and butter mixture to the eggs, stir then gradually add the rest. Do not add too quickly as you don’t want to scramble the eggs from the heat of the chocolate and butter.

Once combined, gradually fold the flour and salt into the chocolate mixture just until it is loosely combined – do not over mix.

Pour the mixture into a 6″ by 6″ baking tray, lined with aluminum foil. There is no need to grease the pan as there is enough butter in the mixture.

Then cook for about 25 minutes.

Let cool in the pan for about 5 minutes – if you can wait that long – and then turn out.