This is undoubtedly a good bandwagon to jump on, although I believe I am the last to jump on it. The famed Baked brownie has been made by many bloggers, even one that topped the Brownie with thinly sliced bacon. Baked is a renowned Brooklyn bakery famous for its incredible brownie recipe, among many other delicious confections. (Yes, bacon.) For those of you who don’t know, Baked is one of the most popular bakeries around. America’s Test Kitchen named it best Brownie or something along those lines, and it was one of Oprah’s favorites. You get the picture.
My husband’s sister and her husband gave me the new cookbook for my birthday this year, and the first thing I made was the Brownie.
Rather than making these brownies in advance, I decided to wait to make them with my husband’s 8-year-old son, my official brownie taste tester. While he is infuriatingly picky when it comes to food, he will devour any brownie or chocolate baked good I make for him. Even better, he wants to bake with me and enjoys it.
I gave the rich chocolatey batter two thumbs up even before they were baked. Besides, how could it not be good with two sticks of butter, 11 ounces of chocolate, and 2 cups of sugar? As a bonus, I used my homemade vanilla extract for the first time, and I will post about it eventually.
Brownie expert’s verdict: This was between the top three brownies we’ve made, and everyone loved them. My favorite is, however, the French Brownie, which, in my opinion, tops these. Even though these two recipes yield very different brownies, the comparison may not be fair.
It took me almost double the amount of time to get the moist crumb I wanted with this recipe. As directed in the recipe, the tester was just plain moist and uncooked in the middle after 30 minutes of cooking. I don’t know what happened.
Are all the accolades that the Baked brownie receives justified? Definitely. The recipe produces a brownie that tastes very traditional. To see if mine differed significantly from those made by the masters, I would like to taste one from the bakery.