Brownie Building Blocks
Intimate Hospitality: I Want it as Much or More for You as I Want it for Myself
Respecting readers’ time; teaching basic, repeatable skills; and tips on professional flavor development are the primary focuses of how TASTE | Pacific Northwest will guide you in 2026. Have fun baking and cooking!
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Confection as Intimate Hospitality
Intimate hospitality. A sense of living deeply in the craft and history of food. We can imagine intimate hospitality as being present in the care we devote to serving those who are dear. Friends, family, guests.
I posit that intimate hospitality should be present in all communal eating: restaurants, professional environments, every manner of shared recreation, and certainly in celebrations. Cooking for others is service to others.
In my life, intimate hospitality has an emotional resonance. The practice of my living deeply in food is an invitation I extend to readers. A shared experience.
Chocolate as the Exemplar of Intimate Hospitality
The first quarter each year offers it own opportunity to focus on three ingredient categories: glorious citrus, succulent over-wintered fruit like pears and apples, and chocolate.
I like thinking of food as a cultural artifact, not just a collection of ingredients. Even the simplest dessert has its roots in time, place and often, memory.
An ingredient as universally adored as chocolate speaks with its own voice. Varieties in flavor, performance, cost and quality seem limitless.
A confection as simple as a brownie should shine. A brownie’s flavor and texture is so up-front that every ingredient, quantity and technique decision counts. You choose.
We Learn From Each Other
We baked off five batches of brownies, testing ingredient changes like bittersweet, semi-sweet, unsweetened chocolate and cocoa powder; different sugar and egg options; and affinity flavor additions like espresso powder and hazelnut butter.
Alice Medrich has written extensively about chocolate, including many, many brownie recipe variations. In “Seriously Bitter Sweet,” Alice reveals interesting discoveries (hers and others’) in not only the results attached to using various chocolate types, but a noticeable textural benefit tied to chilling the brownie mixture overnight before baking.
Alice has a piece on Food 52 on converting chocolate recipes to cocoa powder, as well. A confidence-builder to sharpen your experimentation skills.
Alice also upcycles Steve Klein’s so-called “Ritual Brownies” reco of placing the brownies in an ice bath immediately after they come out of the oven. We chilled Alice’s New Classic Chocolate Brownies ~ one of the five batches ~ using the water bath method. We concluded that the desire for speedy chilling was the driver without overall benefit to the baked brownies.
I’m always interested in technique hacks, though my own brownie preferences don’t always align with others’ results. Neither will yours.
We have two favorites.
General Headnotes
We only use Diamond Crystal kosher salt, a restaurant standard. The volume of [table] ‘salt’ in any recipe is converted by 1 1/2 times to kosher salt. We use only 9” pans, both square and round, so any edited recipe that calls for an 8” pan will have a slightly longer baking time, which we specify in the procedure. “Dry crumb” is a professional baking term which is identified by a few crumbs clinging to a skewer or toothpick.
Hazelnut Brownies
Headnotes
Hazelnut butter is super-easy to make in a food processor using roasted hazelnuts. If your hazelnuts are raw, toast them for 15-18 minutes in a 375° F oven. The recipe is below. Three minutes, beginning to end. You’ll see a 22-second video on Substack Notes if you’re trying it for the first time.
First, we baked Julia Child’s recipe for Best-Ever Brownies from Baking with Julia substituting hazelnut butter for half of the 227 grams. We increased the hazelnut butter to 75% of the total the second time around which produced the contributing flavor we had hoped for.
Whipping eggs and sugar in a brownie recipe predictably yields a more mousse-like texture. Here, the weight of the hazelnut butter mitigated that feature which we loved.
We did refrigerate the batter overnight. It warmed for an hour-plus at room temperature before baking, though the baking time was extended from 26 to 34 minutes. We could discern the textural improvement.
Espresso Brownies
Headnotes
Once again Julia Child’s “Best-Ever Brownies” were the foundation of our two faves. This time we restored the full 227 grams of butter and reduced the eggs from 4 to 3 to enhance chewiness. Medaglia D’Oro espresso powder dissolved in a teaspoon of hot water provided that mysterious depth of flavor. Mini 41% semi-sweet chocolate chips were not only intact when baked, but were discernable and sparkly. A shiny, thin crust, a silky mouthfeel, and a sideways flip-of-the-wrist dash of ground espresso beans and sugar as garnish, and we were all set. Glorious.
The TASTE Flavor Lab
What are the affinity flavors for chocolate? Many, many; these are top-line only: almonds, apricots, Armagnac, bananas, bourbon, brandy, brioche, unsalted butter, caramel, cherries, cinnamon, cloves, coffee/espresso, cognac, Cointreau, cream, cream cheese, creme anglaise, creme fraiche, dates, figs, ginger, graham crackers, Grand Marnier, hazelnuts, honey, Kirsch, liqueurs (numerous), macadamia, malt, maple syrup, marshmallows, mascarpone, milk, mint, nuts, orange blossom water, peanuts, pears. pecans, pepper (black, pink), prunes, raisins, raspberries, rum, sour cream, strawberries, sugar (all), vanilla
So, Brownie Building Blocks?
Eggs create a more cake-like texture, though eggs are always an enrichment;
Replacing [most of] the butter with a nut butter adds depth of flavor and increases density;
Whipping ingredients adds a mousse-like texture by creating a foam as if you were baking a flourless chocolate cake; creaming also incorporates air as a blending and emulsifying technique;
replacing chocolate with cocoa powder deepens flavor and changes ~ often lightening ~ the texture of a brownie significantly. For most people, it’s a personal choice. Remember to read Alice’s Food 52 piece, above.
Your brownie; your choice!
Intimate Hospitality Advice
I encourage you to think of food as exploration, a way of learning while simultaneously serving yourself. In exploring, you open your own portal to memory, identity and place. Learn to trust your own judgment.
My sincerest thanks to TASTE | Pacific Northwest’s many new subscribers, with particular gratitude for paid subscribers ~ our TASTE Buds ~ whose support benefits every reader.
Comments are highly prized!
Asalways, I enjoyed your latest article. YUM!
I love hazelnuts! I’ll have to give the recipe a go