Bittersweet

Those brownies were a riff off the cocoa brownie recipe in Alice Medrich's book Bittersweet. I sometimes up the butter by an ounce or two and I bake them at 325 degrees Fahrenheit with convection, which I think is slighly different from her recipe, but other than that her technique is unchanged. We played around with adding a teaspoon of powdered harissa to add heat and depth. While it was a fun twist, frankly for me the cumin became a bit much. So that a batch of brownies that normally lasts two or three days at the most never actually got finished. The harissa was a good idea that tasted great for the first brownie and sated the palate quickly. Interestingly this tends to be the issue when trying to update classic recipes in general. We love them for a reason and it's very hard to improve on the tried and true. I suppose that's why we use Heinz's (organic) ketchup instead of making our own. Not that we haven't tried, per se, but because new isn't always better. A hard thing for a chef to admit, on the other hand, new classics are created all the time.