Who doesn’t love thick, gooey, fudgy, decadent brownies, right?! I crave chocolate, the darker the better! This was another recipe that I was desperate to work out when I started down this gluten-free path.
Like most people of my generation, as kids we ate brownies as a weekend treat more often than other home baked snacks. It’s an easy desert for most people to make, including non-bakers. You buy a box of mix, add an egg, some oil, mix together and voilà—brownies. The simplicity of this would make most people wonder why I ever spent time trying to alter it (even before working on gluten-free variants). The easiest answer is I wanted something exceptional.
I can recall one specific holiday years ago with my family where I spent the morning chopping exquisite dark chocolates and blending fresh caramel into what I anticipated would be a gold-star winning batch of perfect brownies. Articles would be written. Through a mix-up in communication, my sister had also made brownies but from a box mix. As all the nieces, nephews, siblings & spouses ravaged the dessert table after dinner, I found most of my batch untouched. When I asked my 12-year old nephew if he tried one of my brownies, he simply said “yeah—Mom’s were better.”
I almost quit baking that day.
I’ve come to realize since, that I have a palate for dark chocolate and my nephew absolutely did not. This allowed me to keep pursuing my version of brownie perfection.
Brownies are fundamentally a ganache-like sauce with some minor ingredients added to transform it into something “cake-like.” A phase-transition of baking somewhere between fudge and cake, and as delicious as it sounds. By starting with a ganache, this gives way to a multitude of varieties & flavors; dark chocolate, milk chocolate, even white chocolate, whatever your preference. Also, since there is very little flour in a brownie recipe, changing the flour to a gluten-free blend has a surprisingly low impact to the final texture of the bake. No one will ever know it’s gluten-free.
I use a dark muscovado sugar for this recipe. I realize that muscovado sugar is not the easiest or the cheapest sugar to source for everyone, but you can find it on amazon. This stuff is rock solid when you get it though, so if you do buy it, do not forget to also purchase a sugar keeper. I think it’s safe to say that any brown sugar variant can be used in place of muscovado, just don’t use plain white sugar. If you’re going to take the time to make brown butter, you’re going to want the flavors that dark sugars bring with them.
Chocolate
Chips – Use a high quality chocolate for this recipe and the brownie will be more enjoyable. I use Kirkland 51% cacao semi-sweet chocolate chips, but Godiva semi-sweet chips are equivalent. Anything in the 51% – 60% cacao range should work really well here.
Cacao Powder – You want to use a Dutch Processed Cacao for this recipe. The unsweetened cacao powders are different in that they have not been alkalized or “Dutched” to neutralize the pH of the natural cacao. However, If you change the recipe to a “milk chocolate” version by using milk chocolate chips, I would opt for the unsweetened cacao. I think they pair together well.
This is one of those ingredients I only use for this and a handful of other recipes. It annoys me that I have to buy it, but it’s shelf stable and lasts a while. It’s easy enough to get from Amazon so with a little pre-planning, you’ll be all set. This is necessary in this recipe in order to “season” the brown butter. The percent of milk solids in the butter used here isn’t high enough, so you want to add milk powder to increase all that toffee-caramel-brown butter flavor. There are a lot of non-fat varieties of milk powder which I would avoid.
Gluten-Free Brownies
Serving Size: 8×8 pan (9-24 Brownies)
- Prep Time: 15 min.
- Total Time: 1.5 hours
Ingredients
- 1 block (227g) of European style butter
- ¼ cup Dry Milk Powder
- ½ cup Dutch Process Cocoa Powder
- 11-12 oz chocolate chips (at least 51% cacao), divided
- 3 Tbsp neutral flavor oil
- 3 eggs (room temp)
- ½ cup (100g) packed dark muscovado sugar
- 1¾ cups powdered sugar (confectioners)
- 1 tsp real vanilla extract
- ½ cup (75g) Gluten-Free Baker flour blend
- ¼ tsp Kosher Salt
Method
Pre-Prep
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).
- Grease an 8×8 baking pan and set aside.
Making the brown butter
- Cut the block of butter into tablespoon size pieces. Add to a medium saucepan and place over a medium heat.
- Stir the butter over the heat frequently until the butter starts to foam. The butter will begin to turn a more amber color, and you will begin to smell the milk solids in the butter give off a toffee/nutty-like aroma. This process can take a few minutes.
- Add the ¼ cup of dry milk powder to the brown butter and whisk for 30-60 seconds.
Making the chocolate ganache mixture
- Add-in the ½ cup of Dutch processed cocoa powder and whisk for 30-60 seconds.
- Remove the pan from the heat.
- Add the 6 oz. (half bag) of the chocolate chips and stir-in until full melted.
- Add the 3 Tbsp neutral flavor vegetable oil.
- Set the pan to the side, and allow to cool.
Making the batter
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together the 3 room temperature eggs until well combined.
- Add the ½ cup muscovado sugar to the eggs, and beat until all of the sugar is dissolved into the eggs. This process can take 2-3 minutes on a medium speed.
- Add in the 1 tsp of real vanilla extract.
- Turn off the mixer, and add the 1 ¾ cup confectioners sugar. Mix on low until incorporated, then mix on low-med speed until smooth.
- Add the ½ cup gluten-free flour blend, and the ¼ tsp salt. Mix on low speed until just combined.
- By this time, the chocolate mixture should be cooled. It will most likely still be warm, which is ok. Add the chocolate mixture to the egg/flour/batter mixture and mix on low speed until combined. You are just trying to combine these ingredients at this point. Try not to overwork the batter.
- Add the remaining 5-6 oz. of chocolate chips and mix until just combined.
- Transfer the batter into the 8×8 pan.
- Bake for 30 minutes.
Cooling
- Once baked, allow the brownies to fully cool.
- Cut the brownies into thirds, cleaning the knife after each cut. Rotate the pan 90° and repeat. This will yield you 9 square brownies of equal size.
