Herbed Brownies- But Not That Kind.

The Promise

I promise that you will not have to scroll for half an hour to find the actual recipe but I should start with an important caveat before we get going.

These brownies have herbs in them. They are intended to be a dessert and have a therapeutic effect. If you give them to someone who doesn’t know what they are eating, you could actually get in legal trouble. It isn’t cool or funny but if you eat them or share them with someone who does know what she is getting in to, they are fantastic.

This project started because we got a call from a customer who wanted to make brownies with Decompress in them. My thought was that spending 35 minutes in a 350°F oven might change the extract in a way that would make it less effective. Which is when I had what I thought was a good idea. Add the herbs to a ganache frosting. Ganache, if you are unfamiliar is that amazing thing at the center of a chocolate truffle. This is easily made by heating whipping cream just enough to melt chocolate, mix thoroughly and that is it which means that it isn’t too hot for the herbs.  

 

The recipe

Ingredient	Volumetric	Metric
Butter	1 Stick	113g
Chocolate chips	6 oz	170g
Sugar	1 1/2 cups	300g
Eggs	3	3 but say in French
Flour	1/2 cup +2T	75g
Cocoa	1/4 cup	30g
Salt	Pinch	Pinch

 

1. Over a double boiler melt the butter and chocolate together until fully melted.
2. Take this mixture off the heat.
3. Add sugar (I did 1cup turbinado and ½ cup white) and whisk into the chocolate and butter.
4. Add the eggs one at a time and, you guessed it, stir until you can’t really make out any egg or until you realize that the chocolate and butter was too hot and now you have chocolate scrambled eggs, sad trombone, go back to step 1.
5. Fold in the cocoa, flour and pinch of salt.

Pour this into a buttered 9x9 baking dish and bake at 350°F for 35 minutes.

Or you could skip all of this and just make your favorite recipe for brownies even if it comes from a box. Jeanine says she likes Ghirardelli chocolate supreme brownie mix.

 

Now for the Ganache

This is the real herb delivery device so we have to think about how to dose this. A typical dose for a roughly 150lb person is 3 ml.

12 cut stronger dose = start with 2oz bottle.

09 cut with a normal dose = start with 1oz bottle.

 

The following is for a stronger dose and the brownies cut 3 x 4.

Ingredient	Volume	Metric
Herbal Tincture	2oz	60ml (reduced to 20ml)
Heavy Cream	1/3 cup	80 g (about 82ml)
Chocolate chips 70% cocoa	1 cup	175 g

 

1. Pour the 2oz herbal tincture into a saucepan and reduce to 1/3 over low heat.
2. Add the cream and bring to between 90°F and 110°F
3. Remove from heat and add the chocolate.
4. Let cool until the consistency of frosting.
5. Frost your brownies.
6. Cut into 12 squares and enjoy.

Results

How were they?

Um… really really good. You can barely taste the herbs if at all, the brownie is thick and dense and fudgy but not overwhelming and the ganache is just right. I added 3 different herbal combinations:

 

Quiet Mind. Very relaxing – a great treat before bed or after a hard day to wind down.

Decompress – I got super chilled out with these. It was kind of like the chair was more comfortable than I remember it being and I wasn’t too worried about – anything really.

Peacekeeper – A lot like decompress (these two formulas share quite a few herbs) I can’t speak to its effect on PMS but in general, even as a man, I take peackeeper because it is just a tad stronger than Decompress.

 

Thanks for checking out the blog, I would be really interested in your experiences with these and I look forward to your comments.