I knew right away that malted milk powder would be a bitch and a half to find in the store, but other than that, the ingredients list is quite standard and easy! I’d say the only thing out of the ordinary is the Dutch-processed cocoa powder, but I wouldn’t say there’s anything too wild on the list.
So, off to the store I went for some malted milk powder. My assumption was correct, I could not find it anywhere. I searched high and low, in the baking aisle, the powdered drink section, even in the chocolate syrup section. I thought I had found it when I stumbled upon chocolate malted milk powder. I thought, surely they would keep the regular kind next to the chocolate kind, but alas there was none to be found.
So I asked someone! They looked it up, and sure enough it was out of stock. I refused to buy the chocolate kind, because that is NOT what the recipe called for. So I texted my dad that I wouldn’t be making any brownies tonight, and he promptly went to the local IGA and sent me this:
To which his response was, “it’s going into chocolate brownies, it’s fine”. SO I ENDED UP USING IT.
Other than that, I got all the ingredients right except I used 1/4 teaspoon of regular salt instead of one teaspoon of kosher salt. Because never once in my entire got dang life have I seen kosher salt at the store. Aaaand I used light brown sugar instead of dark because I forgot to pick up dark at the store.
Anyways, throwing it all together was super easy and I really loved how little dishes this recipe made. It’s very straightforward, you really just melt everything together in one bowl and mix. And baking is really easy too! Nothing like throwing a pan in at 350 for half an hour.
This is how they came out after 25 minutes in a 340 degree oven (mine runs super hot):
After I took them out of the oven, I thought, I don’t need to look at the recipe anymore, they’re finished! So I closed the recipe and considered these a success. However, if I had kept it open, or maybe paid more attention to the video itself, I would’ve noticed it said to cool these for an hour, and then chill them in the fridge after that for an hour. Neither of which I did.
I cut into them not even ten minutes after they came out and they looked like this:
These were literally straight up batter on the inside. Perplexed as to how they could have been underbaked, I just stuck them back in for ten minutes. And then another ten. And then another ten. They still looked like batter, though, but I was tired of baking them, so I took them out and gave up, and let them sit on top of the stove overnight. I did eat one while it was all gooey and underbaked, though, and it was pretty alright.
The next day, when I checked on them, they were super hard, and the bottoms were extremely tough to bite through. I ate another one and didn’t really like it that much. But then again, I’ve never been a fan of brownies. Like ever. I had hope for this recipe because Claire’s description of a perfect brownie matches mine almost exactly.
I’m the kind of person who likes a fudgy brownie, not cakey. If it’s cakey, it’s basically just chocolate cake. I honestly like underbaked, dense, molten, you know what I’m saying. And if you put frosting on your brownies… that really is just cake at that point.
So, I kind of fucked it on this recipe, but maybe I’ll try again in the near future and actually let them chill and not be impatient like always. At least my parents said they were good!
Do you like brownies? How do you like yours? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS