Brownie points (+recipes)

Palm Beach Brownie. Photo / Herald on Sunday

Not so long ago I took a cooking class themed around chocolate, in which I asked the participants what they would rank as their top five all-time favourite chocolate desserts.

I discovered that Kiwis favour a good chocolate brownie - a cake that's not really a cake - over all else. But that opened another debate and I found myself mediating a discussion on everybody's "perfect" brownie recipes - should they include white chocolate chunks, sliced toasted almonds, grated coconut, peanut butter coffee or even decadent Snickers bars? On the drive home, I thought about how much I didn't know about the origins of the brownie - other than that it was created in the United States.

A brownie is a semi-flat square or bar, made with chocolate and cooked in a baking tray. According to Wikipedia, its first public appearance was in 1893 at the Palmer House Hotel, where Bertha Palmer requested a dessert for ladies attending a fair that would be smaller than a piece of cake, and easily eaten from a packed lunch. The hotel still serves them today, made to the same recipe.

It wasn't until 1907, in Lowney's Cook Book, that an extra egg was added to that recipe and an additional square of chocolate, creating a richer, fudgy brownie.

To retain the best chocolate taste, brownies should be removed promptly from the oven once done - they will continue to cook for a few minutes from the residual heat. A good guide for cooking time, is about 20 minutes' further baking (in a non-fan or static oven) once you can first smell that delicious baking aroma.

A toothpick or skewer pushed through the middle of the slab should show only a few moist crumbs if the brownies are cooked the right amount. Leave them to cool on a wire rack.

Traditional brownies contain more carbs and fat, and less protein, than a doughnut but healthier options, that still try to keep the richness and texture of the original, have been developed. One such example is a raw food brownie that is frozen rather than cooked to make it set. The base is made from walnuts, dates and cocoa, topped with icing made of avocado, agave nectar, coconut oil, cocoa and cinnamon.

With Christmas just down the road, what better way to get into the spirit than to give tasty brownie squares, filled with a mixture of mixed fruit, mixed spice, little nuggets of cream cheese and chopped dried cherries, all prettily tied up in a lovely festive silver ribbon?

This just shows how adaptable the amazing brownie is and that everybody's brownie recipe is a winner - so long as it's not overcooked.