You know what I like about Thomas Keller’s recipes (aside from everything)? His simplicity. Yeah, he’s got intricate recipes with ingredients not readily available to many home cooks, but when he gets the chance to be simple, he’s good at it. Especially when we’re talking about recipe titles.

For the most part, Keller takes a no-frills approach when naming his recipes. His brownie recipe from ad hoc at home is simply titled “brownies” — minus any capitalization and all the other things you can add to a title (i.e., “double chocolate brownies” or “best brownies in the whole freaking world”). Things many of us do to try and make our recipes stand out from the rest of the pack. He doesn’t need all that.

ad hoc at home, Keller’s latest installment, is by far my favorite.  It’s also the first Keller book that I’ve seriously cooked from, unless you count the time I made Bouchon’s onion soup. Though fantastic, it came at a steep price: Cooking the required 8 pounds of onions for 4 hours made my tiny apartment smell like I had a Funyun party the night before. With each passing day the intensity of the onion scent diminished, but the actual scent got worse. It went from smelling like sweet caramelized onions to the inside the mouth of a halitosis sufferer. But I’d spend another 4 hours of my life stirring a stock pot full of onions for that rich, buttery onion soup.

The wafting aroma of baking brownies is much easier to stomach than that of 8 pounds of slow-cooked onions. And in winter, a house smelling of chocolate and warmed by an oven is one of life’s pleasures. A simple pleasure, just like Keller’s brownies. (Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for recipe.)

This recipe makes 12 brownies. At first, a mere dozen may not seem like enough — but believe me, their richness is more than enough. The recipe can be doubled, however, and baked in a 9×13 pan. This makes the brownies a bit taller, so you can cut them into thinner rectangles. Use good chocolate whenever you can.

BROWNIES
Adapted from ad hoc at home by Thomas Keller
Yield: 12 brownies

• 3/4 cup flour
• 1 cup unsweetened alkalized cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 1/2 cups unsalted butter, softened
• 3 large eggs
• 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups 61-64 percent chocolate (I use chocolate chips for ease)
• Garnish: Powdered sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9×9 pan. Set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, cocoa powder and salt.
3. In a small saucepan (or in the microwaveable glass bowl), melt half of the butter. Put the remaining butter into a medium bowl and pour the melted butter over the non-melted butter. Stir until remaining butter melts, and mixture is creamy with small bits of butter floating around.
4. In a stand mixer, mix together eggs and sugar for 3 minutes, or until pale yellow in color and thick. Add vanilla. With the mixer on lowest speed setting, alternate adding 1/3 of the sifted dry mixture and 1/3 of the butter until just combined. Add in chocolate chips.
5. Spread batter into prepared pan and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out with a few crumbs sticking to it. Completely cool brownies in pan before cutting. Dust with powdered sugar before serving, if desired.

– Cynthia Furey

This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 1:00 am and is filed under Baking/desserts, Cake, In the kitchen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.