My Kick-Ass Brownie Recipe (This involves chocolate and happy Norwegians)

This recipe is not fusion food between French pastry and Norwegian blødkake. This is just the most appreciated cake (ever) by all Norwegians I know who’ve tasted it.

And believe me, I have tried again and again to impress them with profiteroles, lemon tarts, chestnut and coconut cupcakes, organic carrot cakes, and so on and so on. Waited 2 years for the “aaahhh” moment, when everyone looks at me with glitter and childhood and love in their eyes. That came the day I made this Brownie recipe I found from the internet and adapted it to my own taste (btw if you are the inventor of the original recipe let me know and I will acknowledge your website in this blog).

So, if you planned on baking a cake, have limited time, limited baking skills and limited kitchen accessories this is for you: it will enchant your guests and leave them happy. No eletric machines are required for this recipe, all can be mixed with a fork or a wooden spoon. And remember that if the recipe is quick, the brownie does need to rest minimum 2 hours in a fridge for the slightly under-cooked dough to become fluffy and of nice consistency. I bake it in the evening and leave it all night in the fridge.

If you have more time and more expertise in baking, you can try this one Sarah Bernard recipe which was also a success but takes much more steps.

Now for those who are thinking “oh what a great idea, I really want to eat a brownie, and I have this “brownie from a box” in my cupboard, I’ll make that one instead. Shame on you!

These are the three reasons why you should never ever again make a brownie from a box:
1) Ingredients: A cake is supposed to have identified ingredients that you probably already have in your cupboard and in your fridge: eggs, flour, sugar and butter. If you ran out you can og and buy them in any store. Ingredients starting by E followed by a number, coloring agents, preservatives, modified fat, palmoil, etc. are not supposed to be in there. I know we eat a lot of those anyway but if you can avoid eating it that easily (by baking something homemade) you should!
2) Health: And for all of those eating healthy but who still want to endulge in a little chocolate fristelse once in a while, baking your homemade cake is always (ALWAYS) less sweet, less fat and more healthy than any cake from a box where they add too much sugar and too much fat in order to enhance the taste of the product. Check the first ingredient of all brownies from a box: it is always sugar and that is not supposed to be the biggest ingredient of a cake (or waffles, or pancakes).
3) Koselighet: You will free prouder making it from scratch and you will definitely win points on the koselig scale among your friends, partner and family. A homemade cake has some ingredients that no industrial package will ever give you: the effort and love you put into it.

Okay I’ll stop there for the anti-industrial cooking propaganda.

Here is la recette:

250 g dark chocolate in bars
150 g sugar
150 g butter
Vanilla sugar
60 g flour (hvetemel – can be replaced by other flours ex. havremel although I have never tried this recipe with havremel)
3 eggs
1 pinch of salt
2 hand fulls of pecan nuts/almonds/walnuts depending on your taste
1-2 big spoons of icing sugar for decoration (melis)

1. Melt the butter and the chocolate together in a pot at low heat. Do not stir too much in the beginning, let the butter melt into the chocolate. When it is melted stir slowly with a wooden or plastic spoon.
2. Pre-heat the oven at 180 degrees Celcius and put a baking paper in a round-shaped oven tray (such as for pies).
3. In a big bowl, mix the sugar and the vanilla sugar (best results with regular sugar kept in a jar with real vanilla for some months. But in Norway you will only find a kind of icing sugar with vanilla aroma extract actually not coming from vanilla but from wood dust).
4. Pour the chocolate/butter mix over the sugar and stir until the sugar has melted. On the side mix the eggs together with fork and add a pinch of salt.
5. Add the eggs, the flour, and the nuts you’ve broken with your hands to the big bowl.
4. Pour the whole thing into the pie tray and put in the oven for 15 minutes. Turn off the oven after that and leave the cake in the warm oven for 5 minutes.
5. Take out, let it cool down for half an hour or so. And put in the fridge for minimum 2 hours (for the semi-liquid part in the middle to get moist)
6. Take out of the pie tray, sprinkle icing sugar on top and cut in squares. Also possible to decorate with a few of the nuts you used in the brownie.

TAADDAAA. You made it, they are going to love it, and now you can show off about it (but do it subtly, showing off is not allowed in Norway because of Janteloven 😉