Brownie Buttons

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Jayma of Two Scientists Experimenting in the Kitchen. She selected Brownie Buttons, and you can get the complete recipe by visiting her blog. I was really excited to make these. I noticed them right away when I got the cookbook, since there’s a great picture of these white-chocolate topped mini brownies. I’m always happy when the week’s recipe is a cookie. I’m lucky since next week’s selection is also a cookie!

I usually make my recipes over the weekend, but my husband and I were away this weekend for a little getaway. These are so simple and quick that I was able to make them after we got home. They call for basic ingredients which you probably have in the cupboard: a little bittersweet chocolate, brown sugar, egg, butter, flour and so on. The most unusual (and optional) ingredient is orange zest. I didn’t have that on hand, since I made these on the fly, so I used orange oil instead. I love the combination of orange and chocolate, so I didn’t want to leave that out.

You make these brownies in a saucepan, and that’s the only bowl you use so I like that a lot. You start by melting the chocolate, sugar, and butter together. You let that cool and then add the egg and the other ingredients. I think my mixture was too warm when I added the egg, so it wasn’t as smooth as I expected it to be. The recipe says that when you have added all of the ingredients you should have a smooth, glossy batter. Mine wasn’t, but I figured it would work out anyway. I sprayed my baking pan with nonstick spray rather than using butter, and this may have been a mistake. The nonstick spray bubbled up and sort of foamed over the top of the brownies. At first thought that the batch was ruined, but I let them cool and took them out of the pan. They didn’t have nice rounded tops, but otherwise I thought they were ok.

I topped them with white chocolate and that made them look nice and pretty. I was very careful melting the white chocolate, since that is so difficult to work with! I’ve had more than my share of white chocolate seize up! I melted mine in the microwave, in 10 second increments. When the white chocolate looked like it was half melted, I took it out the microwave and just stirred it until it was smooth. I liked these a lot more with the white chocolate topping, so I wouldn’t skip that. This was a good recipe and I’d like to give them another try and see if I can avoid the problem that I had with the nonstick spray. They were quick and easy to make and would fulfill and chocolate craving that you might have.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 106 and 107.