TWD: White Chocolate Brownies

This week’s TWD was chosen by Marthe of Culinary Delights: white chocolate brownies!  I know lots of folks aren’t big on white chocolate, but I don’t mind it.  It wouldn’t be my first choice if presented with a few options, but in certain contexts I think it works.  I’ve never had a brownie that incorporated white chocolate in this way so I was curious how much of the chocolate flavor would come through, especially given that the quantity of white chocolate in the recipe was fairly low.    

I made quite a few changes to the recipe this week.  I scaled way back to make just 1/4 of the recipe and baked the brownies in a loaf pan.  In retrospect, I probably should have used a smaller pan as my brownies were really super thin.  The recipe called for using orange zest in the batter and studding the brownies with raspberries and while I love that combination, I couldn’t find raspberries for a decent price that looked good, so I went with lemon zest and blueberries instead.  I actually used frozen blueberries, which I did not defrost before tossing into the batter.  I skipped the ground nuts in the recipe and substituted an equal amount of flour too.  The brownies were also supposed to have a layer of meringue baked on top but I skipped it for a few reasons, mainly because I’m not a huge fan of meringue.  Also, a lot of the other bakers reported discovering brownie goo under their meringue so I wanted to avoid the guesswork of trying to figure out when my brownies were fully baked.  My thin brownies were completely baked in 25 minutes and I had lined my pan with an aluminum foil sling so I had no trouble removing them. 

Because my brownies were so thin I made a little sandwich with two of the brownies and some whipped cream.  I joked to Shane that it was a play on a Napoleon in reference to the show Chopped on Food Network.  Does anyone else watch that?  It never fails when they get to the dessert round that one of the chefs makes a Napoleon so it’s become a bit of a running joke in our house.  Anyway, cute or not, I had to see how the brownies tasted.  I can definitely say that the white chocolate flavor was practically undetectable.  Lemon was the prominent flavor in my brownies for sure.  The texture was also not what I was expecting – the brownies were almost spongy and reminded me more of cake than anything else.  Don’t get me wrong, they were tasty, just not what I’d had in mind when I saw the recipe.  They’re probably not a repeat here but an interesting recipe I’m glad I tried nonetheless. 

Many thanks to Marthe for hosting this week!  You can find the recipe on her blog or on pages 110-111 of Baking: From My Home to Yours.