One-bite brookies

Addictive? You bet!

Brookies. Photo by Rob S-P

What’s a brookie, you ask? Excellent query. It’s basically what happens when a brownie and a cookie get down and dirty in a 350 degree oven for eight minutes. And like most offspring of tasty parents, these little fellas are delicious. Not only that, but they are plentiful. So follow these instructions closely and you shall be the proud (and soon to be diabetic) foster parent of three dozen brookies.

Step 1. Chop up the chocolate into small pieces. If you have a microwave, melt the butter and chocolate at 20-30 second intervals so you don’t burn them. If like me, however, you don’t have a microwave, fear not! Just heat up a small pot of water on the stove (med-high) and place a tin bowl on top of it. Put the butter and chocolate in the bowl and stir every couple of minutes to prevent burning. Once it’s all combined, put the bowl aside.

Step 2. Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla in a separate big bowl. I use a hand mixer. Then add the chocolate mixture.

Step 3. Combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt in yet another bowl (note: if you used salted butter, you definitely don’t need the salt). Then add the dry ingredients to the big bowl, and mix em all together. You should have a rather thick and dense dough in the end.

Small but delicious. Photo by Rob S-P

Step 4. Line a non-stick baking sheet with wax paper. If you’re paranoid about burning things, you can also lightly grease the top of the wax paper with butter or margarine. Now, size is key: using your hands, make firm balls using about 1 tsp of dough per brookie. They should each be less than the size of a golf ball (maybe even half that size).

Step 5. Stick ’em in the oven at 350 degrees for only about seven or eight minutes. They’ll look a bit undercooked when you take them out, but after they’ve cooled, they are wonderfully chewy.

This recipe is admittedly not too cheap, since proper chocolate will cost you five or six bucks. But when you’re up all night writing a paper, you will be thankful for the sugar rush.

Ingredients: 

200g 70/75% cocoa chocolate

1/3 cup unsalted butter

2 large eggs

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cup flour

2 tbsp cocoa powder

1/3 tsp baking powder

1/3 tsp salt