Tartine's Brownies

I spent most of Labor Day weekend holed up in the library studying for a quiz that didn't encompass most of the concepts that I studied for. I was pretty upset about it, so I skipped lecture after the quiz to bake brownies instead since I consider cooking/baking to be "me" time. While everyone was learning about insulin resistance and all that jazz, I was baking up a storm and styling some food pictures. And then I took a long nap. I'm going to do so well in med school...

These brownies are incredible. A coworker made a batch for when I was leaving DC and shared the recipe with me, and it's now my go-to. It's from the Tartine Bakery Cookbook so I didn't expect anything less than fantastic because Tartine is the bomb (I went there last year). The recipe calls for a pound (a pound!) of chocolate so it's incredibly rich. I cut them into small pieces and ended up with 36 brownies, and although I brought some to share with friends in the library, I still have half a batch left. I guess that's not such a terrible problem to have; too many brownies is the ultimate first world problem.

TARTINE'S BROWNIES

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 sticks butter
• 1 pound bittersweet chocolate, chopped
• 3/4 cup + 2 Tbsp all purpose flour
• 5 large eggs
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

 Preheat oven to 350F. Line a 9" x 13" baking pan with foil and grease. In a saucepan, melt butter over low heat. 

Turn off the heat. Add the chocolate to the melted butter (I used a Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Pound Plus bar) and stir, as the heat from the butter should be enough to melt the chocolate. If you are unable to melt the chocolate fully, turn the heat back on for 10 seconds and stir. Once smooth, set aside and allow to cool.

In a separate large mixing bowl, crack all the eggs. The recipe calls for 5 large eggs, but I only had medium sized eggs so I used 6.

Add the brown sugar, salt, and vanilla extract to the eggs.

Use an electric mixer to beat at high speed for about 4-5 minutes until homogeneous and light in color.

Fold the butter/chocolate into the egg mixture. It doesn't resemble brownie batter here yet but no fear...

Fold the flour into the batter until well incorporated. Now it looks like brownie batter.

Pour into the lined pan and bake for about 25 minutes, until the top looks slightly cracked and is soft to the touch.

Fresh, beautiful brownies straight from the oven :) But do NOT attempt to cut them just yet because they will fall apart. They're so gooey that the toothpick test wouldn't work on these. I popped my pan into the fridge to help accelerate the cooling process and let them set.

Once fully cooled, cut into small pieces and eat! Please share...leaving them alone in the house with you is a tad dangerous.