A word about chocolate

  In the US it is possible to buy something called 'baking chocolate'. This is a bar of chocolate which contains no sugar or any other sweeteners. It is so bitter you cannot eat it directly. This is the chocolate I use to make brownies at home. The first batch that I made here (Miri's favorite!) I bought what I thought was the same thing and just used the whole amount. In that case I bought 'Nero extra bitter' chocolate at the ReformHaus on Rennweg, and I used 120 g. That was a little intense, and I think had too much sugar as well, because there was some in the chocolate. One can also susbsitute cocoa powder (Kakaopulver) for the chocolate. However, the bar of chocolate isn't exactly the same as the cocoa powder--there is fat (cocoa butter) present in the bar that is removed for the cocoa powder, and this affects the texture of the brownies. So normally the books say " for every ounce (28.4 g) of chocolate bar, instead use 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder and 3 tablespoons of butter". (A tablespoon is about 14.8 ml I think. However, in the case of cocoa, 1 tablespoon is 5 g. 1 tablespoon of butter is 15.625 g.) This really doesn't make the right texture, so I try to use some combination--I use some cocoa and some chocolate (and maybe a little less sugar?). So for a half and half version, I would use 60 g chocolate bar, 30 g cocoa powder, and 148 g butter (125 g from the original amount and then 23 g more for the cocoa substitution).

  A word about sugar

  The real original recipe from my mother called for " 1 cup white sugar, 1 cup brown sugar". Brown sugar is something I haven't seen here in Switzerland. It is a dark sugar that is somewhat moist (feucht--not a really dry powder like mehl) and tastes a little more interesting. Here i have just used 1.5 cups total, of a sugar I found at the Reform Haus--one of the roh zuckers, but I forget which kind. Having the wrong sugar also changes the texture of the brownies.

  Yes the eggs in America are different

  The eggs, like everything in America, are much larger. I use the biggest eggs I can find for the brownies, or else use 4 of the small ones.

  The vanilla is also different

  In the US, vanilla comes as a liquid. Here I have seen only the vanilla sugar (available everywhere) and some vanilla powder (at the Reform Haus). I don't really have any idea how much of either of these to use. If you know some other cake or cookie recipies that call for vanilla, probably use the same amount as they say. In the US almost every recipe takes '1 teaspoon' of vanilla.

  A word about flour

  Originally (from my mother) this recipe used white (wheat) flour. I try to eat whole grain (vollkorn) so I have used dinkel vollkornmehl from (you guessed it) the Reform Haus. In the US I used something called 'whole wheat pastry flour' which is the whole wheat kern, but they grind it really fine (fein gemahlen?) so it is almost like using white flour and not so heavy as whole wheat usually is. So far I cannot find this WWPF here, but the dinkel VKM seems ok.

  back to Brownies
back to Zuerich index
back to home

last updated 15 September 2005

webster@andreagrant.org