5 Ingredient Science Brownies
Ingredients
- 400 g sweetener
- 250 ml liquid fat or oil
- 200 ml binder (4 large egg eq.)
- 120 g body and structure
- 100 g flavour compound
- 1 pinch flavour enhancer (encouraged)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180 °C.
- Grease pan for easy release, even if it’s silicone.
- Sift together dry ingredients.
- Add all wet ingredients with mixing until smooth.
- Pour into pan and tap pan on bench to level.
- Bake until cooked, 30-45 minutes until it no longer wobbles.
It has been said that “Baking is science for hungry people” but it’s never really science unless you have some variables and take notes. this recipe is designed for two purposes. Firstly, as a recipe you can use whatever ingredients you have so that you can make brownies whenever you like! The other reason is so that you can have your class produce some delicious experiments and investigate the different variables.
Sweetener
Sugar, honey, jam. All three have sugar in them and all will provide the sweetness and structure required. Sugar-free replacements will work as long as they are a composition that can be used 1:1, so stevia alone isn’t a great choice unless you add more body and structure to compensate or use a pre-combined version.
Liquid Fat
This one is a little tricky as butter can also be a liquid fat for this recipe. We recommend using an oil, but fundamentally anything that can be a liquid such as lard or butter will work well too.
We’ve tested:
-Butter, melted
-Olive Oil
-Avocado Oil
-Canola Oil
Binder
The most common binder is going to be eggs. Alternatively, we’ve tried egg replacements and it’s ended up pretty well. The banana did lead to a more compact texture, and chia seeds cause a very tight though loose crumb.
Options:
-Eggs
-Chia Seeds, soaked (1 part chia seeds + 2.5 part water)
-Banana
Body and structure
Flour is the go to here. Any kind, with or without gluten. Give it a shot.
Flavour
The choice of flavour compound is of course the most important component in determining what you’re going to make. The simple answer is chocolate, in which case use some cocoa powder.
There’s no reason not to experiment if there are other flavours you want to try. The important thing to consider is that this recipe is calibrated for a dry flavour source, if you want to use something wet or oily like peanut butter you may need to adjust other quantities. Almond meal didn’t need any significant adjustments, however, the texture was again altered.
Flavour Enhancer
In the context of baking, a flavour enhancer could be a lot of different things and is partially dependent on what aspects of your flavour ingredient you want to enhance. For a general improvement, you can use something as simple as salt. To bring out the bittersweet notes in chocolate add some instant coffee. Even something like bourbon can be used to improve aromatic characteristics.