Berry flavored Brownie with spicy chocolate tea infusion

Not all blogs would post about a failed recipe but here I am posting one. I won’t really say that it’s a failure completely but because of texture, it doesn’t meet my standards.

Why I made a brownie is really because I had items in the pantry that I don’t know how to use or I dislike to consumer by themselves. What I wanted to dispose really was the Caffe D Vita mixed berry drink primarily because I find it too sweet. And just right, we had tablea to counter the sweetness. Also, we have lots of tea in the pantry and I wantes to make use of this Kusmi Tea, spicy chocolate flavor.

I researched recipes online and tweaked it to incorporate these since they’re not common to brownie mixes.

If you can see, there’s a bit of marbling on the surface. It’s because I attempted to make 2 kinds of batter and supposedly to mix the two in swirls to create an artistic effect and also to combine flavors of each batter separately.

So here, I’m going to share the recipe but I’ll also suggest some tweaking after I tasted them.

Ingredients:

1st batter:

• 2 oz chocolate tablea
• 1.5 oz white chocolate tablets
• 1/4 cup milk
• 3/4 cup water
• 1 cup Caffe D Vita mixed berry flavor
• 1/6 cup sugar
• 1 cup Queensland butter
• 1/4 tsp baking powder (purists don’t add this but I felt I needed this since this is not an ordinary recipe.. just in case!)
• pinch of salt
• 2 eggs and 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 cup flour

2nd batter:

• 3 oz white chocolate tablets
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup water
• 6 g Kusmi tea leaves, spicy chocolate flavor
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup flour (suggested tweaking, replace with only 1/8 cup flour)

Instructions:

1. For the 1st batter, melt the tablea in the milk and water. Add the Caffe D Vita powder and sugar and let mixture boil until reduced to about 2 cups of liquid. (I honestly just trusted my gut on this if I have reduced enough liquid.)
2. Remove from heat and allow to cool a bit. While stirring the mixture, add the eggs and egg yolk one at a time while stirring to prevent them from cooking in the batter. Melt the butter into the mixture. Then add the salt, baking powder and sifted flour. Mix until combined. Don’t overmix. Set aside.
3. For the 2nd batter, boil the tea leaves (I placed it in a metal cylinder to filter off the leaves) in the milk and water for about 2 minutes. Remove the metal cylinder then melt the white chocolate into it. Reduce to about a cup. (Gut feels again).
4. Remove from heat. While stirring, add the egg to prevent from cooking and add in the flour. (You can try the 1/8 cup tweaking instead).
5. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
6. In a 8 x 8 greased baking tray, pour in the chocolate batter first. Then pour in the 2nd batter artistically. Main goal was to create some web but I failed. Oh well.
7. Bake for about 40 minutes to an hour. Some recipes said 25 minutes is enough but it was still wet by then.
8. Once middle portion is completely baked by testing with a toothpick, take out from the oven and let it cool.
9. Once cooled, cut into squares and store in the fridge. Eat chilled.

Insights:

1. Since I used chocolate tablea which essentially lacks the fat from the cocoa butter, I added the egg yolk for more moisture. It worked and also because I added in butter.
2. The baking powder caused my entire brownie to rise midway, creating a lot of uneven puffing up and cracked the surface. Eventually, the air pockets died down and still created a flat surface so it was still ok for me to add it even if purists are against it. I just added it because I’m afraid the brownie may become too dense because of the added egg yolk.
3. My flour for the 2nd batter was too much that it was dense so when I poured it into the 1st batter, it sank, creating a bottom layer full of the 2nd batter.
4. The taste of the Caffe D Vita was too artificial and it imparted somewhat of a chemical taste that I needed a way to hide it so I added the white chocolate tablets into the 1st batter. It kind of worked.
5. I liked the taste of the 2nd batter better and the 1st batter had the bitter traces from the Caffe D Vita but thankfully, when I mixed the two batters, the final outcome’s taste was a beautiful combination. No more bitterness. My mom said it smelled and tasted like candy. Very interesting indeed.
6. The Caffe D Vita had a lot of sugar in it so I used it as my sugar for the 1st batter. I still added sugar to hide the bitterness of whatever chemical is in the artificial flavor.

So far, not bad for my 1st brownie attempt. I was praying to God while doing it because I certainly am not a baker but I just applied what I know in chemistry and math.

Hope you guys learn from my mistakes. Happy cooking and baking!

The Bouncing Tigress