This white chocolate brownie, with flavors of almond and orange, tastes bright and rich. A perfect base to stud with fresh juicy raspberries and blanket with creamy meringue. What do you do when you don’t have raspberries? Use chocolate, big chunks of chocolate.
Apparently I’d made this Tuesdays with Dorie recipe before because there was a note scribbled in the margin of my book, “Good flavor & easy to make. Meringue did not turn out smooth like photo – it was very crumbly & puffy.”
This time as well I ended up with a puffy, crispy meringue top rather than the marshmallow-smooth topping depicted in the book. Curious. Crispy meringue has an irresistible sizzle-like melt-in-the-mouth quality that’s quite addictive, so though it wasn’t like the picture in the book, it was really good. The brownie portion, however, was very runny and gooey in the center. When baking things with toppings it’s difficult to know what’s going on underneath. I thought it was fully baked when I removed it from the oven, but surprise! We made due and ended up consuming the entire pan before getting a picture. With the need to make more for photographic purposes, I decided to do a little experimenting.
The chocolate chunks were great in place of the raspberries and with the meringue topping the brownies seemed to be heading toward S’more territory, so I decided to try using a graham flour to see if I might get a S’mores brownie. I also wanted to test partially baking the brownie portion before adding the topping. I made two half-batches, one with graham flour and a pre-baked base, and the other just like the original recipe.
First of all, a note about graham flour; it’s processed differently from whole wheat flour. Whole wheat flour is made by grinding the entire wheat kernel, whereas each component of the wheat kernel is processed separately and then the flour, germ, and bran are mixed together to make graham flour. This gives it a very unique texture so identifiable in graham crackers. Thanks to Wikipedia, I was able to mix up my own graham flour after discovering my grocery store didn’t sell it.
It just figures that after bothering to make graham flour, I ended up liking the original version better. The graham-flavor just wasn’t strong enough to illicit a S’mores association. The pre-baking technique, however, did yield some interesting information. I baked the brownie base for 15 minutes and then added the topping and continued baking for 18 minutes. The resulting meringue topping was smooth and creamy like a marshmallow. Like the picture in the book. It makes perfect sense now that I think about it, the longer it bakes the dryer the meringue will become. The control batch baked as directed, but I added an additional 15 minutes to get the brownie center to set. The meringue topping was crispy, crumbly, and I think preferable.
This is a fantastically tasty dessert. Marthe of Culinary Delights selected this week’s recipe and she has it posted on her blog if you would like to give them a try.
Recipe Link
Update 6/4
I made these again tonight because we were wanting a little sweet-treat and I figured I probably had what I needed to whip these together. Turns out I didn’t have enough chocolate, so I used mellon-baller scoops of some chocolate ganache I had stashed in the freezer. Then I realized I didn’t have any all-purpose flour, so I used a mix of cake flour and WW pastry flour. Then I remembered I used all the orange rind in the last batch, but that was an easy one because I have a good stash of lemon rind. Uh-oh, I only have 2 eggs and need 4. I have extra whites in the freezer, but what to do about the yolks? Just as I was about to settle on adding a little cream I remembered I had cream cheese! I subbed 1Tbsp. cream cheese for each yolk. David gets nervous when I start subbing and making up for missing ingredients, so I kept quiet and just baked them up. I’m a little shocked at how well they turned out. No one would know I was scavenging the kitchen to pull these together. The only way David will know is if he happens to read this! Shhhh. Oh, and 45 minutes of baking solved the gooey center problem.
Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. 128 recipes completed 93 to go!
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I like the idea of putting chocolate chunks in these. Too bad the s’mores version didn’t quite work out, but it was interesting to learn that you can make your own graham flour!
Love all of the experiments! I wish I had had the chance to remake them, since mine were an epic fail.
I’m impressed that you tried so many different things with this recipe! We thought these were just OK and I wasn’t inspired to try it again so soon. Chocolate ganache scoops could get me there, though! Nicely done!