Strawberry Chocolate Brownies

1. 01 Introduction: Welcome to this class. Today I am going to teach you how to make these delicious chocolate strawberry brownies. First, I will teach you how to make the batter for the brownies. Next, I will teach you how to prepare the pan and add the batter and the strawberry jam. And then we will swirl the strawberry jam to make a swirl in our brownies. Next, I will show you how to bake and cool the brownies. Then I will teach you how to make the strawberry filling that goes on top of the brownies. Next, I will teach you how to make the chocolate ganache that is spread on top of the chilled brownies. We will finish with me teaching you how to remove the brownies from the pan and then cut the brownies. I am a self taught baker and cake decorator. Many years ago I decided I wanted to open up my own home bakery. But I didn't feel like my cake decorating skills were at the level that I could create beautiful cakes for other people, for special occasions. I took some classes, read some books, watched a lot of videos, and of course, practice until I felt like my skills were at the level that I could make those beautiful cakes. I then opened up my own home bakery, and we had this business for several years. Until my husband got a job offer across the country in New York City. We felt like this was a good move for us, so I closed down my home bakery and we moved across the country. Now here in New York City, I do not want to go through the steps to open up another home bakery, but I still love baking. As retired teacher, I love teaching. I've decided to share my skills with you on skill share. This class is for the baker that would like to learn how to make a delicious brownie that is a little bit different than just your regular fudge brownie. I am excited to teach you the skills in this class. Let's move on to lesson number one, Making the Ba. 2. 02 Making the Batter: We are ready to start making the brownie batter. In this bowl, I want to put my butter and chocolate. I'm going to cut the butter into like one tablespoon servings. And it doesn't have to be exact, the main idea is to make it so it melt faster. By breaking it down, I also want to break my chocolate into the squares so that it also melts faster. We're now going to put this in the microwave for in 32nd increments, stir it in between until the chocolate and butter are melted. We want it at 50% power. We'll be back to check it after this 30 seconds is over. This is just stint. We're going to pull this out and we want to stir it. As you can see, 30 seconds, it was obviously not enough. I didn't think it would be, but I did want to make sure I got that stir in before I did the next 32nd. We're going to put that back in the microwave for another 30 seconds. Again, it is at 50% We just continue until it's melted. We'll be back to show you what we do next. Once we have this completely melted, I just took this out of the microwave. Again, about the third or fourth cooking, there is still some chocolate that's not melted, but the butter is completely melted. We're just going to stir it to get that chocolate completely melted. We'll know it's melted when we go like this and no chocolate comes up there, you can see it is completely melted. In this bowl, we're going to add the cocoa, the flour, and the salt. All we want to do with this is just whisk it until it's completely combined. Now in this bowl, we want to add the sugar, the eggs, and our vanilla. We just want to mix this really well too. We don't need a blunder. In fact, brownies are best if they're not over mixed with the blender. We're just using the same whisk that we use on the flour. Mixing that in, this is the bigger bowl. Instead of adding the sugar to our chocolate, we're going to add our chocolate to the sugar because we cooked it at 50% power and then stirred it till the chocolate melted and let it sit for a few minutes. We're fine, and we're not going to be cooking the eggs and getting scrambled eggs now. We just want to mix this until it's well mixed with that. Well mixed, we now want to add that four and cocoa. And we're also going to add our strawberries that we chopped up. We want to add them now so they can get a little bit of the coating of the flour. They won't all sink to the bottom. And we're just going to whisk this together. And there we have our batter. I just want to take a little taste to make sure it has everything Mm. That tastes good. In our next lesson, we will prepare the pan, put the batter in the pan, the strawberry that we're going to swirl in the pan, and then we'll be ready to bake. 3. 03 Prepare and Fill the Pan: We're ready to get the brownie batter into the pan and get it ready to bake. Our oven has been preheated. You want to make sure you start preheating it before you start making the browning. So it will be heated and ready for the brownies. Here is our pan. I want to do a quick spray of the pan before I do anything else, making sure all the sides have it. I'm not as concerned with the bottom because I'm now going to put parchment paper on the bottom. And I want this parchment paper to be longer. And then I'm going to stick this in the bottom of my pen and have it go up the side. We're doing this so that we'll be able to lift those brownies out when we are completely done. I'm holding this up the side. Once I have that all the way up the side like that, I'm going to spray down the parchment paper so that the brownies don't stick to the parchment paper. Now we want to take our brownie mixture and put it in our pen. You'll notice it's very thick. That's good. Brownie batter should be thick. And then we're going to spread this around, making sure we get to the edges. Once we get this to the edges, I'm going to take this jam. I stir it. Well, I'm just going to put dollops of the jam on the batter. This is the strawberry jam that's going to make swirls. We want to cut pretty deep with our swirls so that they're going through out with that knife that we cut the butter, we're going to go like this and we just go back and forth like this and then this way back and forth. If you see some big blobs, just do like I'm doing and make sure that it gets kind of separated and into the Brownie. The purpose right now is to just get it all mixed in. Now I want to smooth this out, make sure it's all basically the same thickness, and now this is ready to go into the oven. Our next lesson, we'll show you how to bake and cool it to get it ready for the toppings that go on top. 4. 04 Baking and Cooling: We're ready to bake and then cool our brownies. You remember our last lesson, we prepared the pan and put the brownies in. We're now going to put this in a 350 degree oven and bake it for 35 to 40 minutes. We have the oven, the rack in the middle. And we're just going to stick this right on the rack in the center. And then bake this for 35 to 40 minutes. I'm going to check it at 35 minutes. We'll be back to check on the brownies in 35 minutes. Our timer is about ready to go off. We're going to check the brownies and see if they are done. Here are the brownies and I can see that they're separated from the edges there. We're going to take them out. We're now going to let the brownies sit on this cooling rack until they're completely cool. In the next lesson, I will teach you how to make the strawberry filling that goes on top of these brownies. 5. 05 The Strawberry Filling: The brownies have been cooling for a while, so we're going to make the strawberry feeling. To put on top of the brownies. The recipe says to use a stand mixer, but you can also use a portable mixer like this. And before I added the powdered sugar, I want to kind of cream the power up so that it's not getting creamed. While we have all that powdered sugar in, it'll just make the powdered sugar mixing. Now that I have that creamed, I want to add my four cups of powdered sugar. There's 123.4 Powdered sugar likes to really fluff up. I want this on the lowest food I can get it, and I want to be mainly in the butter and slowly incorporate the powdered sugar into that butter. You can see I'm slowly moving into the powdered sugar, and if I go too fast, then of course it up. Continue. You've got the count of sugar incorporated into the butter. Now we're going to add the flavor and the color by adding our 12 cup of jam, the strawberry jam. And we just want to mix this up until it's completely combined and mixed together. That tastes just ripe. Now, there really wasn't much. We're now ready to put this onto our brownies. I'm going to bring my brownies over. The reason we wanted the brownies to cool is we didn't want to melt on hot brownies. Now I'm going to just dump this on top and then spread it around taking it to the edge. We want it to be all about the same thickness so that when we cut into it, it's going to look really pretty when it's all the same things, when it looks like it's all evenly distributed and about the same thickness we want to cover this. Going to go ahead and put another one on because that did not completely cover. Now we want to put this in the fridge for at least an hour until the butter has set up, and this is firm. The reason we want that to be firm is because when we put the ganache on top, it's going to be a little bit warm. And we don't want them to blend. We want it to be definite layers on our brownies. So we'll be back in an hour or so once this feeling has firmed up. 6. 06 The Chocolate Ganache: We're ready to make the chocolate ganache in this bowl. I have my three cups of chocolate chips and I'm going to put my one tablespoon of butter in there. I want this ready. Before I heat my cream up, I'm now going to go over to the microwave and heat this up. Starting at 1 minute, we want to get it really steamy, but it does not have to be actually boiling. Going to stick this in there and start with just 1 minute. We'll be back in a minute when the microwaves, There's our microwave. I do want to take this out because I don't want to get super heated hot cream. I want to break the surface when I feel it. I feel it's still not very warm. I'm going to give it another full minute again. We'll be back in a minute. After this is deemed, the microwave is about ready to do. Let's check it and see how warm it is. I want to stir it. It is getting warm. If you look really careful, you might see a little bit of steam, but I want to give it another half a minute to make sure it's really stay, but I don't think we'll get boiling at a half a minute. We'll be back when that dings. In a half a minute. Again, this is getting ready to do. Let's pull it out. I'm stirring it. It's still not steaming quite as much as I want it to, so I'm going to nuke it one more, 30 seconds, steam. This is getting quite hot. I want to break the surface now. I'm going to pour this on top of my chocolate chips, and you can see the steam rising. Can I don't know if you can. In the video, we're going to now let this sit for three to 4 minutes before we do anything. That's going to give the chocolate time to melt. So we'll be back in three to 4 minutes to stir this. Our chocolate and milk have been sitting for about 3 minutes. 3-4 minutes. We're now ready to stir it. I'm just going to carefully stir it because my bowl is really full and you're going to see the butter melt, the chocolate melt, this is going to form a nice rich ganas. As we stir it had to be very patient and keep stirring carefully. And it will form, it's going to go from looking like this to a nice rich chocolate. Notice when I do that quick stir from the center, how we're getting a nice rich chocolate in the center and how it's moving out, Get this butter pushed against the side. So it will melt because it's not melting as fast as the chocolate, and we don't want a lump of butters left in there. Okay, now let's just keep stirring again. You'll see a nice rich chocolate is starting to form, starting in the inside and moving out. When we're done, there will be no lumps and it'll all be that nice rich color that we're seeing in the center. We are getting close, I am scraping at the edges to bring that in. You'll see how nice, thick and rich that is. There's no lumps left. We're ready now to put this on. The brownies here is our brownies going to take that plastic off? You'll notice when I touch this it's firm. Now, we're just going to take this and pour it on Again, just like with the strawberry filling, or you could say butter cream. I want this to be a fairly thick layer. With that on, I'm not going to use my offset spatula and move this around until the whole thing is covered. Because this is a liquid form, it will self level. Now, I'm going to take this wrap that I used before, put it back on. This is going to go in the fridge until it's completely set up. We want the ganas to become solid. In our next lesson, I will show you how to remove the brownies from the pan and to cut them, getting them ready to serve. 7. 07 Removing From Pam and Cutting: The brownies have been sitting in the fridge overnight. We're now ready to take him out of the pan so that we can serve them. As you remember, we use this parchment paper, so it would be easier to lift it out. So we just want to lift it out of the pan and stick it onto this board. And then we want to peel the parchment paper back. As you look at the side, you can see it's not perfect. There's imperfections there. If you want to perfect, you could trim the sides. Since I'm just going to enjoy them with friends, I'm not going to worry about that. The imperfections don't bother me. What I want to do now is I want to score these before I cut them. I want to look and see this is half the reason why I'm scoring is when I, if I don't think it's right, I can always change it so it's a very light score to begin with this, I'm going a little bit deeper because I think I do have that half. There's my half then I want to look at this and divide it also to be the half. I want to do the same with this. I'm just making a very light score. I see there. I think I would rather go a little bit more that way. It was not straight there. It looks better. I'm going to do the same this way. I want to try to look and see what's half score it. Then I'm going to do third because these are very rich, so I don't want them too big. I'm actually looking at the edges before I score all the way across. Okay. I want to score that and then score that. I can look and see if it looks about right. And I want to do the same here. Score just the edge to mark. That looks good. Maybe a little bit more there. Okay. And then score that across and score that across. Now I have marked all of the cuts. I can go like this and try to cut with this, and it just goes straight down. But since this is not big enough, it's a little bit more cumbersome, but it does work. The other way I can do it is I can use this knife. And just through as I go down the thing, as I've done both of them, it's about equal. You decide which way you want to cut it and go ahead and cut them. I think I actually liked it better this way, so I'm going to just push that straight out because I got the chocolate solid. I'm able to touch the chocolate to help me in cutting. If it were still soft, I wouldn't be able to do that. I have cut all of the ones this way, but as you look at this, it's getting really Gruss and I'm starting to pull the Ginache up because there's so much stuff on it. I'm actually going to clean this so that I can get smoother cuts just using a paper towel and you can decide how you want to clean up. Now I'm going to do the vertical this way. Just push that down. Look on the vertical. I'm going to do better with the knife because it is so long and they're already cut. And I can just bring it up and take it to the next one. And you can see how that's going to work. And there we have our Brownie. 8. 08 Final Thoughts: Thank you for taking this class. We had fun making our chocolate strawberry brownies. You learned how to make the brownie batter, then we learned how to fill the pan, how to dollop the strawberry jam on top, and then swirl it so that we would have a chocolate strawberry swirled brownie. We then baked and cooled the brownies. While the brownies cooled, we made the delicious strawberry filling. We then spread it on top of the brownies and covered it. Put it in the fridge so it could chill and set. While that was chilling, I made the chocolate ganache after the brownies had chilled and that strawberry filling had set until it was firm. We poured the chocolate ganache on top of that filling and spread it around. We then put this back in the fridge so that the chocolate ganache could also set with all of it set. We took it out of the fridge, removed it from the pan, scored it, and then cut the brownies so that we could get the delicious strawberry chocolate brownies. The recipe for this is in the project section. Your project for this class is to bake these brownies. Please take a picture and post it so everyone can see you. Good work. Also tell us how it went from my kitchen to your kitchen. Happy bake.