where am I?
Brownies
Answer
Richard responds:
Dear Fiona
You mention two of Nigella`s books but neither have a recipe for Brownies. I have a copy of all her books (obviously!) and there is a recipe in her second book, "How To Be A Domestic Goddess", so I will address your question from that.
As a starting point, I hope you realise that part of the brief of being a chocolate brownie is that de facto they are supposed to have a certain degree of chewiness even when they are fully cooked. Shades of childhood reminiscences of eating raw cake mix are supposed to resonate when you bite into them. However, I guess that your problem is a step back from that, and that they are not getting sufficiently cooked. So below I give my cooking recommendation.
Second point to make is to ensure that you are using the correct size of tin. People are often sloppy on this, and don`t think it will matter. You can be relaxed about a lot of things in cooking, but when it comes to cake making, the surface area of the cake mixture and the depth of the mixture are crucial; a certain amount of moisture will be driven off when baking, and a change in tin size can drastically alter the cooking characteristics of a recipe. So use N.L.`s 33 x 23 x 5.5 cm tin. Brownies are about to become a signature dish in your household they will be that good, so treat yourself to a nice new tin!
Finally, it is important to understand when cooking on an Aga that exact temperature comparisons are to some extent misleading, as the way an Aga oven works is not solely dependent on the air temperature inside any of the ovens; they also cook by infra red heat radiated from the oven castings. This is an Aga distinctive which gives such superlative cooking results.
Off the top of my head, I would suggest you try cooking Nigellas recipe (page 193) on the grid shelf on the floor of the roasting oven, with the cold plain shelf on the third set of runners above, cooking for the time she specifies, 25mins. Perhaps give it 5-10 mins more if necessary. For a four oven cooker, alternatively you could cook for the time specified, but on the grid shelf on the floor of the baking oven. I cannot product test every recipe to the letter, but am confident the above will do the trick. So please give me your feedback and I will edit the above answer based on your findings. Beware Nigella`s sage warning of over-cooking, she`s quite right, dry brownies are just sooooo 1970s. So don`t go there.
On a final note, try replacing the walnuts with either pecans or macadamias, I think far nicer!
Good luck!
Richard
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I recently bought and tried out recipes from Nigella Lawson`s books "Nigella Bites" and "How to be a Domestic Goddess". Baking especially followed to the rule still does not quite turn out ie oven temperatures are exact, yet the `Brownies` are still soggy after the required amount of time! Can you help? Question from Fiona McCrudden