Well, only two layers are brownies. One layer is frosting and another is ganache, so that gets you to four layers. But that means there are four recipes to make this dessert.
This is also an unconventional presentation of brownies: they are baked in a round, spring-form pan instead of a square one. The inspiration for this is a layered cake where each layer is exposed and visible, and often one layer is a mousse. This entails using some special equipment.
As a consequence, this post is divided into sections.
- Remarks and Hints
- The Equipment
- The Recipes
- Brown Sugar Brownies
- Peanut Butter Frosting
- Peanut Butter Brownies
- Chocolate ganache
- The Presentation
Remarks and Hints
I’ll start with a few hints.
First, the recipes call for room temperature butter. This means you need to pull the butter from the refrigerator and let it sit on the counter for at least an hour before using it. It does not mean “nuke it in the microwave. ” The microwave will turn the outside to soup and the inside will still be hard. The butter should soft when a finger pressed into leaves an indentation.
The reason room temperature butter is important is because when you whip it with the sugars, you are not only making batter, but you are adding air to the result as well. This makes for lighter cakes and brownies that rise better.
Don’t use melted butter unless the recipe specifically calls for it. Melted butter won’t hold the air, nor will hard-as-a-rock butter fresh from the refrigerator.
Speaking of adding air, that’s why you should also sift your powdered ingredients. Sifting the dry ingredients not only mixes them but adds volume, i.e., air, usually about 20% more volume. Again, the result is lighter cakes and brownies that rise better.
If you don’t have a sifter–I didn’t have one for ages–you probably do have a whisk. If you do, use it to mix the dry ingredients. It’s not as good as sifting them, but it’s better than just stirring with a mixing spoon.
Adding air is one reason why you add eggs one at a time to the batter. Not deflating the air is also why you add the dry ingredients in batches instead of all of all at once.
The original idea was to produce brownies where one layer was a conventional brownie and another was like a brownie, but made with peanut butter instead of chocolate. So, layers made me think of layer cakes, which made me think of presentation. That led to this amazing cake on Lindsay’s website.I hope I to make this cake eventually. Maybe even next week.
Anyway, I wondered how she did that, and that led me to discover cake molds and acetate. So I bought a kit and tried it out with a the brown sugar brownies on this page and a recipe for peanut butter mousse I’d found online. It worked pretty well, except that the mousse wasn’t especially stable and didn’t hold up well after removing the layered result from the refrigerator, but the tools were exactly what I needed for this dessert.
That segues to the equipment…
The Equipment
I used spring-form pans to make the brownie layers. I suppose you could use conventional cake pans, but spring-form pans make it much easier to extract the cake layer from the pan.
For the presentation, though, you need some specialized tools. In particular, you need an expandable cake mold and acetate sheets. I bought the kit pictured below from Amazon.
The two main elements are the mold, which is adjustable from six to twelve inches, and the acetate roll which you place between the mold and the cake layers. This one was only $14 and worked really well. There’s enough acetate in the kit to make at least a dozen cakes.
As I mentioned in the hints above, I now own a sifter. I bought this one from Amazon. I confess, though, I still usually just whisk the dry ingredients, especially when I’m making Mr. Gene’s cookies.
The Recipes
Bottom layer: Brown Sugar Brownies
Ingredients
- 1/2 C Flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 C unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 C butter at room temperature
- 1 C light brown sugar
- 1 tsp ground cinnimon
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp Almond extract (optional)
- 2 eggs Large or Jumbo
- 1/2 C Reese's Pieces or chopped nuts (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F
- Cut parchment paper to fit the bottom of a 9-inch spring-form pan and spray the sides with a non-stick spray such as Baker's Joy with flour.
- Mix dry ingredients in a bowl
- In a separate bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar until fluffy
- Add eggs to butter/sugar mixture one at a time and mix until blended
- Add vanilla and almond extract, continuing to mix until blended. Don't over-do the almond extract! It can be overwhelming, but a small amount adds a nice undertone.
- Add half the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar/egg mixture and blend until combined, then add the second half and continue until well-mixed
- Finally, add the Reese's pieces (or nuts, if using…) and blend on low speed
- Place the batter in the prepared baking pan and cook for twenty minutes. A toothpick should come out clean when the brownies are done.
- Cool for about ten minutes before removing from the pan
Notes
Peanut Butter Frosting
Ingredients
- 1/2 C Creamy peanut butter
- 1/4 C Butter at room temperature
- 1 C Confectioner's sugar
- 1.5 tbsp milk. Amount is "more or less" depending on consistency you need.
- 1 tsp Vanilla extract (optional)
Instructions
- beat peanut butter and butter in bowl until well-combined. It's important that the butter be at room temperature.
- Blend in the sugar, a quarter cup at a time, until well mixed
- Blend in the vanilla extract, if using.
- Add the milk, 1/2 tbsp at a time, until the frosting is spreadable. Don't add too much, since you don't want the frosting oozing out between the layers.
Notes
Third Layer–Peanut Butter Brownies
Ingredients
- 1/2 C creamy peanut butter
- 1/3 C butter, at room temperature
- 2/3 C granulated sugar
- 1/2 C light brown sugar
- 2 eggs Large or Jumbo
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 C flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 C Mini M&Ms (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F
- Cut parchment paper to fit the bottom of a 9-inch, spring-form pan. Spray the sides and bottom of the pan, the put the parchment paper inside. Spraying the bottom helps the parchment paper adhere to the pan.
- Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl
- In a separate bowl, cream together the butter and peanut butter
- Add the eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly after each addition
- Add the sugars in 3-4 increments, mixing thoroughly after each addtion.
- Add half the flour mixture and mix at medium to low speed
- Add the remaining flour mixture and continue mixing
- Add the M&Ms
- Place in prepared pan and bake for 30-35 minutes. A toothpick will come out clean when the brownies are done.
- Let cool at least ten minutes before removing from pan
Notes
Chocolate Ganache
Ingredients
- 130 g chocolate chips (about 1 1/3 C)
- 1 C heavy whipping cream
Instructions
- Measure out chips into small mixing bowl
- Heat the cream in a sauce pan until it just starts to simmer–bubbles should be just beginning to form at the edges of the pan.
- Pour the cream over the chips. DO NOT STIR YET. If needed, you can shake the bowl to be sure the cream covers all the chips.
- Cover the bowl with a plate and WAIT FIVE MINUTES. Time how long you wait. Too long or too short and the ganache will fail.
- After five minutes, remove the plate and, starting in the middle, beging stirring the cream and chips mixture. At first it will be a kind of thin, milk chocolate, but it quickly begins to assume a darker color and a thicker texture. Continue mixing until there are no light swirls left.
- WAIT ANOTHER FIFTEEN MINUTES before using. It takes a bit for it to thicken up. Fifteen minutes is just right for the desert in this blog. Waiting longer gives a thicker ganache, which would be fine for this dessert, too, but waiting thirty minutes or longer might make it harder to get a glossy shine to the finished product.
Notes
The Presentation
Four Layer Brownies
Equipment
- 1 Adjustable cake ring mold, with collar and acetate sheet
Materials
- 1 Brown sugar brownies, cooled
- 1 small bowl Peanut butter frosting
- 1 Peanut butter brownies, cooled
- 1 bowl Chocolate Ganache (prepared during this step)
- Flake salt for garnish (optional)
Instructions
- Don't fix the chocolate ganache until you've done the first seven steps.
- Place the brown sugar brownies on a ten-inch, round cake board or on a round serving platter.
- Frost the top only of the brownies, leaving about a quarter inch at the edge unfrosted.
- Center the peanut butter brownies on top of the frosted brown sugar brownies layer.
- Adjust your cake mold so it's about 8.5" in diameter. You're going to use the mold to cut through the two brownie layers and trim off the edges where the heat from the pan has browned them. This will expose the cake-like brownie underneath.
- Center the mold on top of the brownies. Be sure it's centered! Gently press down, cutting through the brownie layers. If the edge of the brownies are too crisp to cut through, adjust your mold's diameter. You can also use a paring knife to help make the cut. You want to cleanly cut through the browies without collapsing them, so slow and gentle is the way to go.
- Discard the edge browned edge portions that you just cut off–or save them. They make delicious toppings for ice cream!
- Now you're ready to make the ganache.
- …ten minutes later…OK, you're ganache is now mixed and resting for fifteen minutes, so go back to the brownies. Expand the mold and lift it off the layers. You'll see the two brownie layers nicely displayed. We're going to want to preserve that for the presentation, so the next step is to trim a sheet of acetate so it will wrap around the brownie layers with an inch or two of overlap.
- Put the trimmed lucite inside the expanded mold and slip both over the brownie layers. Once in place, tighten the mold back up. The acetate won't stick to the layers, but it will keep the ganache from leaking and covering up the layers that we just exposed.
- You've probably still got ten minutes of wait time on the ganache at this point, so have a cup of coffee. In any case, once the ganache is sufficiently set up. pour it on top of the peanut butter brownie layer. If needed, smooth it out with a spatula.
- Now place the whole assembly in the refrigerator for at least thirty minutes–an hour is better. You want the ganache to set up, so when you remove the mold, it doesn't drip down the sides.
- I sprinkled flake salt on the ganache at this point. It gives it a nice look, and the extra salt adds some flavor. I suppose you could dust if with coconut flakes, too, if you like those dreadful things. The taste and texture of coconut makes me gag.
- …thirty minutes later…Expand the mold and lift it off the serving platter, then peal the acetate away from the brownies and ganache. If you've waited long enough, the ganache will have a nice edge and consitute a visible top layer to your desert.
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