Brookie = Half Brownie, Half Cookie

Over the last few weeks, I have been making and remaking a dessert that I saw on Australian Masterchef (I don’t know what season – I’m a few seasons behind because I live in the UK and so it’s not shown up to date.) The Brookie was made in an immunity challenge and won the contestant a place to cook off against a professional chef.

The idea is simple enough: crunchy on the outside (like a cookie) and soft and gooey in the middle (like a brownie.) However, even though I started with a base recipe and an idea of what to do I had to adapt it along the way get the desired effect. I loved making them, once I got all the kinks worked out they became super easy and one of the staple bakes I make for friends and family. I will add the full recipe at the bottom of this post but first I’m going to talk about what I found the hardest to get right.

The consistency of the dough

So the dough has to rest after it has been mixed to make it firm enough to shape into balls before baking. Originally I started out with an hour in the fridge but depending on what size bowl I used and how I mixed it meant that this was either not enough, or too long. In my first and second batches, I added the dry ingredients directly into the melted chocolate mix rather than the other way around which (obviously) meant the mixture would take longer to cool down. Eventually, I settled with pouring the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients effectively cooling them down quicker and rested the dough in the fridge for an hour and then out of the fridge (just on a surface in my kitchen) for a further half an hour.

Too rich, or not rich enough?

So I have an incredibly sweet tooth, but I found that the use of both 350g of dark chocolate, 100g of dark chocolate chips AND 1tsp of vanilla extract just a little bit sickly. So in a few different batches, I switched it up, either using milk chocolate to melt or white/milk chocolate chips with the dark chocolate. In the end, I scraped the vanilla extract all together as I didn’t think it enhanced the flavour very much and it was nice to have the full-on chocolate flavour (plus I ran out of it after batch three and forgot to buy more.) I decided to stick with 350g of dark chocolate but used milk chocolate chips instead of dark chocolate, which just cut through the strength of the dark chocolate slightly.

Cooking time

So what I learnt is that when in the oven Brookies need to be WATCHED LIKE A HAWK. I think I have spent more time squatting over my oven in the past few weeks than I have done actually eating the brookies! My original timing was 15 minutes, which worked well for those Brookies on the bottom of the oven, however the ones in the middle and on the top shelf came out over baked and hard. The next batch I took the time for the Brookies on the top shelf down to 12 minutes and they looked perfect, but after a few minutes they caved in in the middle (like an underbaked cake does.) Take three went better and after the longest 13 minutes in the world I took the Brookies out of the oven and they were cooked perfectly (the ones on the top shelf anyway.) I decided in the end on three cooking times: 13 minutes for the ones on the top shelf, 14 minutes for the ones in the middle of the oven, and 15 minutes for those on the bottom (a bit over the top I know.) It’s also very surreal taking them out of the oven because they do not look done AT ALL but the top layer thickens out when they are cooling to form that beautiful cookie-like texture.

So now I’ve gone through all my issues with them, here’s the recipe in case anybody wants to try them! I highly recommend them, they have been a hit amongst my friends, family and work colleagues (even so much to the extent that I have been asked to try and make a white chocolate version of these, so essentially half Blondie half Cookies which I will give a go soon hopefully.)

Ingredients 

350g Dark Chocolate

45g Unsalted Butter

225g Caster Sugar

80g Corn Flour

1tsp Baking Power

100g Milk Chocolate Chips

3 Eggs

Method 

1. Break the dark chocolate up into small pieces and melt with the butter in the microwave in one minute intervals (takes between 2 and 3 minutes depending on strength of microwave, size of bowl etc.)
2. Put the caster sugar, corn flour, baking powder, eggs and half the chocolate chips into a large bowl (if you have one with a lid use that – if not any bowl will do!)
3. Add the melted chocolate and butter to the other ingredients and combine well.
4. Cover and leave to rest in the fridge for one hour, then at room temperature for a further half an hour.
5. Whilst the dough is resting line three or four baking trays with greaseproof/ non-stick paper.
6. When the dough is rested scoop into same size balls (I like to use an ice cream scoop but a tablespoon will work fine) and put onto the lined baking trays with good space between each dough ball as they will spread.
7. Press the leftover chocolate chips into the dough balls when they are on the baking trays (you will have lots left over so don’t be stingy!)
8. Bake for between 13 and 15 minutes at 180°C.
9. Leave to cool until they are firm and easy to pick up.
10. Enjoy!
11. Makes between 12 and 16 (depending on how generous your dough balls were.)