I’m getting more and more confident with my sourdough and with confidence comes the temptation to take a risk and play around with it and move away from familiarity and normal. This particular risk involved an experiment to see if I could rejig my double choc brownie recipe, and make it RED VELVET.
We love red velvet in our house and I wanted to combine this classic with the newcomer favourite in the brownies. I had to try and recalculate how much of the original brownie mixture to take of in order to accomodate the red velvet layer as simply keeping the recipe the same and adding it on would lead to a brownie that would be too thick and simply wouldn’t cook.
Red Velvet Characteristics
The main taste of a red velvet cake comes predominately from the icing, normally made from cream cheese, vanilla extract, and sugar.
The sponge itself? Nothing too different from a normal sponge cake recipe you’ve seen a hundred times, apart from the fact it has a small amount of cocoa powder and some recipes may include buttermilk to make it extra fluffy and moist. As this isn’t a cake recipe we don’t need to worry about that!
The main thing that makes it special is the colour, and this is the hardest part to get right in a red velvet recipe because of the presence of the cocoa powder. With this brownie recipe containing more chocolate in addition to this it’s absolutely crucial to use a good quality food colouring or you’re setting yourself up to fail with a pretty standard brown chocolate brownie / cake.
Recipe Development
In order to fit in the cheesecake layer to the brownies, I decided to reduce my original Sourdough Brownie mix by approximately a quarter, plus some minor alterations to individual ingredients including slightly less chocolate, the inclusion of a small amount of white wine vinegar, and the obvious addition of red food colouring. That let me fit in a cheesecake mix comprising of 260g full fat cream cheese, 60g caster sugar, 1 tsp vanilla extract and 1 tbsp groundnut oil (or any other neutral oil).
The Verdict?
The came out nice and red, and passed the taste test with some harsh critics! If you are a red velvet fan and have tried my other brownies then you need to give these a go!
I’m sticking to my original recipe and they’ll be hard to budge from being number one on the podium for me but my wife, a regular attendee at Red Velvet Anonymous, loves these and prefers them to the double choc version.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes! The full recipe is below.
Red Velvet Sourdough Brownies
Ingredients
Brownie Mix
- 80 g Unsalted butter
- 150 g Milk Chocolate bar
- 75 g Milk Chocolate chips
- 75 g White Chocolate chip
- 45 g Cocoa Powder
- 1½ tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1 tsp White Wine Vinegar
- 2 Eggs
- 3 tbsp Groundnut Oil (or any other neutral oil)
- 150 g Caster Sugar
- 75 g Brown Sugar
- 95 g Sourdough Starter (Discard, not active)
- 90 g Plain Flour
- ¼ tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Red Food Colouring (It must be good quality. Poor colouring won't overpower the chocolate and cocoa powder)
Cheesecake Icing Swirl
- 200 g Full Fat Cream Cheese
- 60 g Caster Sugar
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1 tbsp Groundnut Oil
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 160°C (fan oven).
- Melt the butter in a pan over a low heat then add the chocolate bar, all of the milk chocolate chips, and around ⅔ of the white chocolate chips, vanilla extract and cocoa powder. Heat and stir until fully melted and smooth. Set aside to cool for now.
- In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, caster sugar, brown sugar, and groundnut oil for around 5 minutes. You can do this by hand but it’s much quicker and easier with a mixer. Hand mixers work fine.
- Add in the sourdough starter discard, and all of the recently cooled chocolate mix from step one. Mix thoroughly together until combined. Add in the white wine vinegar and red food colouring and mix again.
- In a small bowl, weigh out your flour and then add in the salt. Mix through the remainder of the white chocolate chips.
- Add the flour mix to the other bowl with your brownie mixture and stir with a spatula. Don’t over mix it, just go until it’s come together and there are no lumps of flour visible.
- Line a square baking tin with parchment paper and pour in ¾ of the red brownie mixture. Use the spatula to smooth over the surface.
- Whisk together all of the ingredients of the cheesecake swirl and pour over the top of the mix in the baking tin. Add in the remainder of the red brownie mix.
- Gently swirl the top layers of the brownie mix and cheesecake swirl until it appears slightly marbled.
- Scatter over the remainder of the white chocolate chips and then bake in the centre of the oven for 40 minutes (keep an eye on it as every oven is different. When it has the matte finish on top and is beginning to crack on the edges, take it out).
- Let the baking tray sit until cooled, the brownie is still cooking in it. Don’t be tempted to cut in early!
- Once cooled, carefully remove the brownie from the tray and cut into 16 squares, serve up and enjoy.
