TWD: French Chocolate Brownies & My Blog's Birthday!

This week's recipe was french chocolate brownies, chosen by Di of Di's Kitchen Notebook. I wasn't too intrigued at first, but I'm so glad I made them! And I just realized that June 3 (today) is my blog's birthday! So it's a good thing I made brownies to celebrate. ;) I can't believe it's been a year already. I feel like I should say something more but I'm not quite sure what. I can say that I love being a part of the food blogging community and that there are so many amazing, caring and inspiring food bloggers!

I had my first taste of these brownies at 5:30am the day after making them. I wanted to bring some brownies to work, and the first piece I cut for myself ended up kind of falling apart. So I just ate it which was not so smart in retrospect considering the fact that I was barely awake and not able to totally enjoy it.

I was skeptical of adding raisins to a brownie, as I'm sure many other people were. But I thought I would trust in Dorie, and just see how it turned out. Well I was right about the raisins - kind of weird. You're supposed to flambé them, but my rum wouldn't light on fire (I thought it was supposed to be easy to light alcohol on fire?) so I kind of want to try the brownies again if I can figure out how to flambé properly. Aside from that though, these brownies were so very delicious. They're incredibly moist and somewhere between a chocolate cake and a brownie. Not the dense kind of brownie though, which usually I favour. At first I thought they could've been more chocolate-y but really they're quite perfect just the way they are, and they're not too sweet. I have no idea if the 1/8 teaspoon of cinnamon really made a difference in flavour.

I had to take the brownie photos with my cute new dish! I have no idea what I'm going to use it for but I had to have it.

Other TWD recipes I've made:
Pecan Honey Sticky Buns
Orange Berry Muffins
Pecan Sour Cream Biscuits

French Chocolate Brownies
Adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours

Makes 16 brownies

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
1/3 cup raisins, dark or golden
1 1/2 tablespoons water
1 1/2 tablespoons dark rum
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons; 6 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature and cut into 12 pieces
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup sugar

Preheat the oven to 300F. Line an 8-inch square baking pan with foil, place the pan on a baking sheet, and set aside.

Whisk together the flour, salt and cinnamon, if you're using it.

Put the raisins in a small saucepan with the water, bring to a boil over medium heat and cook until the water almost evaporates. Add the rum, let it warm for about 30 seconds, turn off the heat, stand back and ignite the rum. Allow the flames to die down, and set the raisins aside until needed.

Put the chocolate in a metal bowl and set the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Slowly and gently melt the chocolate, stirring occasionally. Remove the bowl from the saucepan and add the butter, stirring so that it melts. It's important that the chocolate and butter not get very hot. However, if the butter is not melting, you can put the bowl back over the water for a minute. If you've got a couple of little bits of unmelted butter, leave them—it's better to have a few bits than to overheat the whole. Set the chocolate aside for the moment.

Working with a stand mixer with the whisk attachment, beat the eggs and sugar until they are thick and pale, about 2 minutes. Lower the mixer speed and pour in the chocolate-butter, mixing only until it is incorporated—you'll have a thick, creamy batter. Add the dry ingredients and mix at low speed for about 30 seconds—the dry ingredients won't be completely incorporated and that's fine. Finish folding in the dry ingredients by hand with a rubber spatula, then fold in the raisins along with any liquid remaining in the pan.

Scrape the batter into the pan and bake 50 to 60 minutes, or until the top is dry and crackled and a knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and allow the brownies to cool to warm or room temperature.

Carefully lift the brownies out of the pan, using the foil edges as handles, and transfer to a cutting board. With a long-bladed knife, cut the brownies into 16 squares.