For this year's Readers' Choice Week, we asked our readers to prove their cooking prowess by sharing their best recipes with us—and dang, you guys are good. These are the five winning recipes—and the story behind the cooks who created them. Today, Ellen Dow shares her recipe for Double-Almond Chocolate Brownies.
If you've ever thought your brownies needed more chocolate, reader Ellen Dow is the woman for you. For many years, the Massachusetts home baker was disappointed in the lack of "true chocolate flavor" in average baked goods, so she developed something that kicked up the intensity of the humble cocoa bean. In her original recipe, she used really good, high-fat dark cocoa, two types of chocolate, and espresso powder to amp up the richness. And it was good—but it wasn't good enough.
As a college student in the summer of 1973, she traveled to Austria and fell in love with marzipan—a sweet paste made of almonds, honey, and sugar— particularly when it was covered in chocolate. Once she arrived back to Boston, a lightbulb went off: Marzipan needed to go into her brownies. However, marzipan itself is incredibly sweet, so she used almond paste instead, which has more almonds to sugar proportionately and pairs better with brownie batter. "I wanted to showcase the great affinity chocolate and almonds share, and provide wonderful textural contrasts in each bite," Dow explains, and she's done that with her intensely chocolate double-almond brownies. A layer of almond paste is sandwiched in between two layers of brownie batter, with the nuttiness echoed with a sprinkling of chopped almonds on top.
The first time that she gave these to her brother, he exclaimed, "Get away, Satan!" because they're that devilishly good. This super-rich dessert is not meant for eating an entire pan of. She serves it in 2" squares when she's entertaining family and friends, saving them for more special occasions.
Dow is always experimenting in the kitchen. "I'm constantly scouring the Earth for new recipes to try, and to put my own twist on them." She hasn't touched this double-almond brownie recipe much since she first developed it in the '70s, but once in a while she'll add walnuts in for extra crunch. It's been passed down through the family, too. She recalls putting the recipe in her niece's wedding shower gift, who first tried them when she was six years old. Now her niece has a daughter who loves them, too. Her tried-and-true recipe tester is her husband, who she always asks, "Is this a keeper?" When he tried these brownies decades ago, he immediately replied, "It's a keeper."
When it comes to washing them down, Dow has a few suggestions. "It's wonderful with coffee or milk, but I suppose a little glass of Amaretto wouldn't hurt either."
