Gluten-Free Brownie Moelleux

What do you do on a day like today?

Yeah, I bake too.

This is my recipe for a brownie moelleux. A moelleux is a french chocolate cake that is crusty on the edges and gooey in the middle. It’s pronounced « mo-el … and then the ending sounds like the vowels in the word could – mo-el-(and think could without the c or the d).

The recipe calls for twice as much butter and chocolate as brownies do (literally) to approximately the same amount of flour (although they don’t use flour). Moelleux means « soft » like …. a mattress is soft, not like a kitten is soft.

Or moelleux like I’ve become after ten years of children, cheese and chocolate. Ha!

This is the current me, by the way, in all my untrammelled, un made-up, unflattering shirt glory. Judge me quietly. 😉 

But Matthieu is behind me pushing me to be real on my blog and leave behind the fantasy of my size 8 wedding dress « you go babe! » (except he doesn ‘t quite say it like that).

I like moelleux (s) and will give you the traditional recipe one day, but I thought I might apply the flour part, or lack thereof to my brownie recipe, which is always a huge success here (and which I attribute mainly to the fact that I use gluten free flour).

I had the idea that it might taste good with the almond powder and corn starch substitute that a moelleux calls for – thus the brownie moelleux.

You preheat the oven to (210 celsius or 425 farenheit) and then grease a 13×9 pan with butter.

Then take good unsweetened chocolate. I use Lindt 99%.

If you don’t know what that is, some people actually like chocolate with absolutely no sugar in it – the chocolate connaisseurs, kind of like the people who drink coffee made out of beans that some animal pooped out.

It can be expensive (back to the chocolate here). I saw that you can order it online in the states through some googling, but it might just be easier to stick with Ghiradelli’s. And of course, nothing is stopping you from you using Hershey’s but I think that bitter quality chocolate makes a difference.

Look at how thin this thing is!

So first you start melting 110 grams of that plus 110 grams of butter in a double boiler. Or two mismatched saucepans piled on top of each other. In french it’s called a bain marie (Mary’s bath). Go figure?

Obviously everything here is in grams, so let me help you out there. It’s 4 oz of chocolate and 4 oz of butter that you need to melt.

And while you’re doing that, beat 4 whole eggs.

You know, all eggs are brown here except kosher ones and it makes it really hard at Easter time.

Add 2 cups of sugar into the eggs (about 260 grams if you’re in France and measuring – they don’t have standard cup or spoon measures here and have to weigh everything). Make sure it’s very fine pastry sugar so that your moelleux doesn’t crunch.

And a ½ teaspoon of salt. And a teaspoon of vanilla.

And then pour the melted chocolate and butter in.

Once you’ve given all that a good whisk, you add ¾ cup of almond powder (65 grams) and ¼ cup (40 grams) of corn starch.

Mix it all together and pour the batter into your greased pan.

Turn down the heat to 350°F (180°C) and bake the brownies for 25 minutes, checking to make sure the edges are not getting too brown.

This is what it looks like when it’s done. Sir was playing with our new camera and thought the green tint to the glass pan was more interesting than what was in it.  Boys.

See how oozy gooey it is?

Here’s a “reasonable” sized portion that is only missing a dollop of ice cream on top.

Or you can just skip the baking altogether and dig right in.

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