Unlike the rest of the world, who read it right when it was released, I just got around to reading Ina Garten’s highly anticipated memoir, Be Ready When The Luck Happens. While the book is excellent, especially if you’re a fan of Ina or the original Barefoot Contessa series on Food Network, I kept thinking about a single recipe story she told in the book.
When developing the recipe for her Outrageous Brownies, she discovered that it wasn’t so much the type of cocoa or a little coffee that gave the brownies their distinct chocolate bitterness. Instead, Ina insists the balance of sweetness, richness, and chocolate flavor was bolstered by vanilla extract—a whopping two tablespoons of the stuff.
As soon as I finished the book, I preheated the oven for Ina’s brownies. I needed to know if tons of vanilla extract would make for the best-ever brownies.
Simply Recipes / Meghan Splawn
How Ina’s Garten’s Outrageous Brownies Are Made
Ina’s Outrageous Brownie recipe makes a huge batch of brownies. And when you consider that she first made them to sell at the original Barefoot Contessa stores, a sheet pan’s worth of brownies to keep up with demand makes perfect sense. At home, a pound of butter, nearly two pounds of chocolate chips, and a pound of walnuts feels a little unhinged, but the recipe is pretty straightforward.
Even if you halved Ina’s recipe to make it more comparable to a classic homemade brownie in volume, Ina’s recipe would still have three times the amount of vanilla! Some recipes, like Simply Recipe’s Fudgy Cocoa Brownies, don’t call for vanilla extract at all.
As in most chocolate brownie recipes, butter and chocolate are melted together in a double boiler; flour, baking soda, and salt are sifted together; and then eggs, sugar, and coffee granules are stirred together with a large volume of vanilla.
Each of these mixtures is combined, and the brownies are baked in a buttered and floured 12×18-inch sheet pan. Ina suggests rapping the pan on the oven rack about halfway through baking, and cooling the brownies completely—including overnight in the fridge—before cutting them into generous squares.
Simply Recipes / Meghan Splawn
These brownies have a crackled-crisp top and a fudgy interior studded with walnuts and chocolate pieces. At first bite, the brownies are sweet and buttery, with a subtle chocolate flavor. It would honestly be easy to get fatigued on the rich chocolate flavor, especially considering how large the brownies are, but I found myself going back for bite after bite and being surprised when I finished a whole brownie.
If I hadn’t already known the “secret ingredient,” I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what made the brownie so irresistible! Of course, now I know that including a ton of vanilla extract balanced the richness of the semisweet chocolate and cut down on the brownie’s overall sweetness.
Simply Recipes / Meghan Splawn
While I can’t say that Ina’s brownie recipe will be my new go-to—it makes more than my family of four can eat at one time—I am very excited to try doctoring up my favorite boxed brownie mix with a shot of vanilla extract. While Ina has her own recipe for homemade Vanilla Extract, she’s also shared that Nielsen-Massey is her favorite store-bought vanilla if you’re looking to try this out for yourself.
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