Dark and Stormy brownies. Lately I find myself drinking a lot of Dark and Stormies – a combination of Gosling’s dark rum, Gosling’s ginger beer, and lime juice. They’re spicy, flavorful, and moody – they somehow seem very appropriate for this time of year Either way, I have had a recipe from Ideas in Food for these brownies bookmarked for a long time. If you’ve never checked out Ideas in Food, I’d definitely recommend it. They are a husband and wife team that generates some of the most interesting and creative material on food I’ve seen, anywhere. Anyway, these brownies were the first actual recipe of theirs that I tried. The flavor of the brownies was amazing. Perfect. So powerful. However, the texture was decidedly weird. They were moist and dense, both pluses, but also very crumbly. They barely stayed together when I took them out of the pan, and they had a dense, cocoa-y mouthfeel. Not totally unpleasant, but not very transportable, and not the brownie I was looking for. The incredible flavor of the brownies came from simply pulsing fresh ginger and lime peel (they suggest lime oil, but I couldn’t find any) with the sugars in a food processor, and of course, adding a bit of rum. Pretty transferrable techniques, so I decided to apply them to a brownie recipe with a better texture to get the flavor-texture combo I was looking for. I bet you could even use these tricks to doctor up a batch of boxed brownies, sacrilegious as it may sound. If you try it, definitely let me know the results.
Dark and Stormy Brownies
- 7 oz semisweet baking chocolate
- 1 stick salted butter
- 3 TBS cocoa
- 3 eggs
- 3/4 c. sugar
- 1/2 c. brown sugar
- zest/peel of 1 lime
- 3 inches fresh ginger, peeled and cut into large chunks
- 2 TBS Gosling’s dark rum
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 c. flour
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9×13 inch baking pan. Set aside
- In a small saucepan, gently melt the chocolate and butter together over low heat, stirring all the while. Alternatively, you can do this in a bain-marie or double boiler – the point is to keep the chocolate from burning or overheating while you melt it, but you can do this carefully without using a double boiler. Whisk the cocoa powder into the melted chocolate and stir until smooth. Remove from heat and set aside.
- Place sugars, peeled ginger, and lime peel/zest into a food processor, and pulse until the ginger and lime are cut very fine and evenly dispersed throughout the sugar. In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, ginger-lime-sugar, rum, and salt until combined. Whisk in warm chocolate mixture and stir to combine. Finally, fold in flour, stirring gently until just incorporated. Spoon the batter out over the prepared pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes, then check for doneness – a toothpick inserted into the center should have a few moist crumbs attached to it. PLEASE NOTE: I previously made these brownies in an 8×8 pan and thought they were overdone at 37 minutes, as well as too thick. I think they would be better in a 9×13 for a shorter cooking time, but 25-30 minutes is really my best guess at cooking time. It may be worth it to start checking them at 20 minutes, although I doubt they’ll be done that quickly.
Dining and Cooking