50g/⅓ cup peanuts (try to get unsalted ones)
300g/10oz dark/bittersweet chocolate
250g/1 cup + 2tbsp butter
150g/¾ cup light brown sugar
150g/¾ cup golden caster/superfine sugar
4 eggs
70g/½ cup plain/all-purpose flour
50g/½ cup cocoa powder
½tsp baking powder
A generous pinch of smoked sea salt
EQUIPMENT
25cm/10in square cake tin/pan
These are my all-time favourite brownies. They’re dark and fudgy and rich and salty – everything I look for when I crave comfort. You can replace the peanuts with any nut you fancy, but there’s something pleasingly American about this combination. In A Confederacy of Dunces, Ignatius J. Reilly’s mother Irene sits with a box of brownies at the bar. Offering them to the bartender, she assures him ‘they nice’. Ignore this faint praise – these are better than nice.
Serves 12–16
1. Preheat your oven to 150C fan/325F/gas 3. Butter and line the tin with parchment paper; the brownie will be too delicate to ‘turn out’, so do make sure you have plenty of paper to grasp hold of once it’s baked.
2. Toast the peanuts in a dry frying pan over a low heat until golden brown, then set aside to cool. Bring a saucepan of water to a gentle simmer, and melt 200g/7oz of the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over it.
3. Put the butter and sugars into a bowl and beat until light and creamy – the sugar should no longer feel grainy between your fingers. Try to use an electric implement (electric hand whisk or stand mixer) if you have one, so you can get the mixture really light; if you don’t have one, do beat for longer than you normally would.
4. Crack the eggs, one at a time, into the creamed butter and sugar, beating well after each addition. Pour in the melted chocolate, then chop the other 100g/3½oz of chocolate, and mix this through. Roughly chop the peanuts, and fold them through. Sieve the flour, cocoa, and baking powder into the mixture and fold in with a spatula until just combined. Do this gently, but make sure you get rid of any white streaks.
5. Pour the mixture into the tin, then smooth out the top. Place the batter in the oven for 40 minutes. After this time, the batter will have risen a little and should have flaked on top. Remove from the oven when a skewer inserted comes out sticky, but without raw dough on it. Start checking the brownies after around 30 minutes, and err on the side of caution; you can always pop it back in for a minute or so, but you can’t reclaim the dense fudginess the middle of a brownie should have. Sprinkle with the smoked salt, and leave to cool in the tin before cutting into squares.