Thursday, September 27, 2012

White Chocolate Brownies with White Chocolate Chips

In my first, and possibly only, cooking entry to the blog, I present to you a recipe I recently used to make white chocolate brownies with white chocolate chips. I jokingly refer to these brownies as White Kryptonite. Do you like white chocolate?

Below are the ingredients and equipment you'll need:
* A 9x13 metal baking pan (8x8 can be made to work, but I find the 9x13 works better for this particular recipe. An 8x8 pan may result in the outer section of the brownies being overcooked while the inner section gets undercooked)
* Mixing bowl
* Large pot
* 6 tablespoons of butter
* 14oz of white chocolate
* 3 eggs
* 1/2 cup of white sugar
* 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
* 2 cups of white chocolate chips (I used an 11oz bag of white chocolate chips, which is not quite 2 cups, but was close enough)
* 1 tablespoon of lemon juice (optional - supposedly this is to regulate the flavor and keep the brownies from getting too sweet, but it's not mandatory)
* 1 and 3/4 cups of flour
* Dash of water (optional)
* Spoon, spatula and/or whatever you want to use to mix things together

Here is a picture of all the ingredients assembled prior to starting:


Let the battle begin!

If you have the time, let the butter and eggs warm up to room temperature before starting, but if you don't have the time, it's no big deal. The brownies will still be absurdly tasty.

Preheat your oven to 355 degrees, Fahrenheit.

Chop the 14oz of white chocolate into small pieces. This is not totally necessary, but it will make melting it a lot easier. Below is a photo of the chopped chocolate:
No need to use a serrated knife - it just happened to be the sharpest one I had

After you've chopped up the white chocolate, put it into a large pot along with the butter. It will look something like this:

Slowly melt the chocolate and butter on a stove top, stirring regularly once you can see them starting to melt (after turning on the heat, you can jump ahead a step and work on the eggs and sugar while the chocolate and butter start to melt). On my stove I used heat setting #3, but your stove may necessitate a different setting. The thing to remember is that you want to melt the chocolate and butter, not burn it, so be careful not to turn up the heat too much. Once the chocolate and butter is melted and thoroughly mixed together, turn off the heat. Your melted chocolate and butter will look something like this:

In a mixing bowl, combine the eggs and sugar. It will look close to this:

Then add the melted chocolate. Mix it up a bit and then add the vanilla extract and lemon juice and mix a little more. The resulting batter will look something like this:

Now mix in the flour. Here's where the optional dash of water can come in. You might notice that when you add in the flour the batter may appear fairly dry. If you want to make the batter easier to mix and pour into the pan, add in the slight touch of water, which will help with that (but you'll probably need to bake an extra minute or two). Either way, the brownies will turn out fine.

Now, gently mix in the white chocolate chips. Try to get them evenly distributed in the batter. Below is a photo of the batter with chocolate chips mixed in:

When finished, pour the batter into the baking pan. If you don't have a non-stick pan, you may want to grease your pan before pouring the batter in. The batter might be a bit drier than you're used to working with, (if you didn't add the water) and you may need to use your spoon or spatula to spread the batter around the pan. Below is a photo of the batter in the pan (this photo has batter that had the optional water added):

Put the pan with the batter into the oven and bake for about 25 minutes. Use a knife/fork/toothpick to see if the brownies are ready by sticking it into the brownies. If it comes out clean, then the brownies are done, if not, give them another minute or two in the oven and then test again. Below is a photo of a finished brownie batch in the pan:

When the brownies are finished, remove them from the oven and let them cool for twenty or so minutes. When ready, remove the brownies from the pan. Be warned: these brownies are very soft, which on one hand makes them extra tasty, but on the other hands it means they will break easily, so be really careful when removing the brownies from the pan.

Last, cut the brownies into the desired pieces, and enjoy. Below is a photo I took after I had cut up the brownies and put them on a plate:


Yum.