Chocolate: a quintessential part of desserts. But yes, chocolate has shaped (literally) many aspects of both sweet and savoury food and it is a really versatile ingredient despite its better known use in desserts. However, chocolate in savoury is for another day. Today I wanted to do none other than the famous classic: chocolate brownie. I wanted to do something with chocolate that would sit high on the plate and it popped into my mind! Now when it comes to brownies, there's always this element of preference. Some people like their brownie more firm, leaning towards the cake and others prefer their brownie to be nice and fudgy. Personally, I'm all for the fudgy interior. The difference is here and there in terms of ingredients but that small difference multiplies itself in the oven and will change the fate of your brownie. Fudgy ones will have more butter and chocolate and cakey ones will have less of those and more flour. If you are a fudgy brownie fanatic, there is a method where you add chunks of unmelted chocolate into your batter, so try it out!

As I said before, I wanted the brownie to sit high on the plate. And that's where the idea of making a double decker brownie came into mind. For the layer between the two bars, I decided to do a salted caramel. A little backstory- my first time (intentionally) making caramel was when I used it to test spun sugar. That turned out quite well and I decided to make caramel sauce which, subsequently, did not turn out well, but at least I wasn't left feverishly stirring caramel-y milk with a rock of caramel on a bed of praline (oops). I would certainly recommend to swirl your sugar around and add other ingredients to it when it just starts to golden up (tried and tested!). 

Now this would obviously be too sweet, so to make it more appealing, I decided to pair it with a bitter coffee foam (let's just assume "there's no such thing as too much chocolate" doesn't exist here). Its definitely an in-your-face addition but certainly worth it (and needed); plus we'd give anything for a coffee-chocolate combo, wouldn't we? This isn't very original but sometimes you come across a confectionary that seems just right; this is probably one of them.

Brownie:

• 2/3 cup all purpose flour
• A pinch of salt
• 220 gm. bittersweet chocolate
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup neutral oil
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 3 eggs + 1 yolk
• *extra bittersweet choc. chunks

Preheat your oven to 180C. In a glass bowl, combine chocolate, butter and oil and melt over a double boiler until all combined. Cool slightly. Add sugar and combine. Add one lightly whisked egg at a time and completely incorporate before adding the next. Combine flour and salt and mix until just combined and smooth. Add extra choc. chunks, if using. Pour in a greased pan lined with parchment paper Bake for about 25 minutes until only a few crumbs appear on skewer inserted. Cool and slice.

Salted caramel:

• ¼ cup granulated sugar
• 1 tsp. water
• A pinch of salt + extra
• 1/8 cup milk
• 1 tbsp. butter

Melt the sugar, water and salt over a low heat in a heavy based pan. Once it starts to turn golden, add the butter and milk. Stir together on a medium heat until butter has melted. Make sure there aren’t any lumps. Sprinkle some extra salt.

Bitter Coffee Whip:

• 2 tbsp. instant coffee
• 2 tbsp. granulated sugar
• 2 tbsp. HOT water

Whip to stiff/ semi stiff peaks.

Assembly:

• Mint leaves, for garnish

Sandwich the caramel between 2 brownie slices. Dollop or quenelle (if you're feeling fancy) the coffee whip.

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