Food You Can Eat: Saucepan Brownies with Ganache

First things first:  Oh.  My.  God.  These are the most incredible brownies I have ever had in my entire life.  They are quick and easy to make, the texture is perfect, and the taste is a mystical experience.  These are even better than my previous best-ever-brownie recipe that I had developed years ago—but that’s because Grandma must have been part deity.  I bow to her glorious brownie recipe.

A caveat before we get started:  Normally, when making a recipe of hers that requires frosting (yes, brownies REQUIRE frosting), I use one of her recipes, but there wasn’t really one that would have worked in this case, so I decided to use ganache instead.  Do not fear—ganache is not difficult to make as long as you are patient and have more than two brain cells to rub together.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Brownies:

½ Lb. Butter

4 oz. Unsweetened Chocolate

2 Cups Sugar

1 Cup Nuts, chopped

1 Cup Flour, sifted

2 tsp. Baking Powder

2 tsp. Vanilla

4 Eggs, beaten

Ganache:

16 oz. Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

1 Cup Heavy Cream

½ Cup Butter

In a saucepan over medium heat, melt butter and chocolate until smooth.  Remove from heat.

Add sugar, nuts, flour, baking powder and vanilla and mix well.  Add eggs and mix well.

Pour batter into a buttered and lightly floured 9” x 13” pan.

Bake in a 350-degree oven for 30-35 minutes. Test with a toothpick for doneness.

While the brownies are cooling, it’s time to make the ganache.

Pour chocolate in a medium sized glass or ceramic bowl. Set aside.

Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add in cream when butter is just about melted.

Increase heat slightly and using a whisk, stir constantly, but gently. Heat until mixture just barely comes to a boil.

Pour cream over chocolate in the bowl. Cover with a lid for 3-4 minutes.  The chocolate should have softened considerably by this point.

Using a large spoon, begin stirring gently, combining the chocolate with the butter-cream mixture.  Take care not to use either a whisk or to mix the ingredients too quickly.  This will introduce bubbles into the ganache which will make it look terrible when spreading it on the brownies.  Patience, grasshopper.  After about 4 minutes, it should look like this:

Pour and spread the ganache over the brownies.

If you want to serve fresh (which I totally recommend), let everything set for probably another 10 minutes before serving.  If, however, you are making this ahead of time, then you’ll want to place the pan in the refrigerator UNCOVERED.  If you cover it, then the ganache will stick to the cover and get pulled off when you remove the cover.  Just let everything set completely before covering and it will be fine.

Serve with a giant glass of milk, a scoop of ice cream, and a dose of smelling salts to revive the people who will faint in a wave of ecstasy.

For this recipe, I used probably ¾ of the ganache.  Dumping the rest of it would be a crime against humanity, and eating it all right then and there would have put me into a coma (would have been worth it).  So, the best way to store ganache long term is to freeze it.  Pour the ganache into a container, then—using a sheet of plastic wrap—cover the ganache by placing the plastic wrap on the surface so that no air reaches it.  This will allow the ganache to keep for up to three months without a degradation in quality.