The Williams-Sonoma Cookbook
Everyone needs a good brownie recipe
I know what you are thinking. Another Williams Sonoma recipe book. How many could this woman have? Well, I have two. This one is an older book; first printed in 2008. It belongs to my husband and I’ve just sort of jumped into using it for the baking section.
It’s a BIG book. 431 pages of recipes covering everything from appetizers to pasta to bread and desserts. Then there is the glossary, measuring liquids by volume conversion table, doneness temperatures of meat and poultry table, a substitutions and equivalents table plus more reference materials all at the back of the cookbook.
The recipe book is hardcover but it does have a dust jacket which I’m not fond of. I take it off when using the book to avoid it ripping or getting damaged some other way. Unfortunately, the pretty picture on the dust cover is not carried over onto the hardcover underneath.
Back to the brownies
Nothing unusual or difficult to gather for this recipe. It requires the usual eggs, butter, sugar, flour stuff that the vast majority of desserts call for. They give you the option of adding additional chocolate chips, white chocolate chips or peanut butter chips in the end. I chose to go with peanut butter chips since you can’t go wrong with chocolate and peanut butter.
The recipe gives both volume and weight measurements. First baking step…melt the butter and “finely” chopped unsweetened chocolate over low heat in a saucepan. I didn’t “finely” chop my chocolate. Maybe I’m using the wrong type of cutting board, but I feel like the chocolate ends up stuck to the board if I keep chopping. Besides, it’s just going to be melted. So, I went with “medium” chopped unsweetened chocolate.
Next comes white sugar and cake flour. It’s not a lot of cake flour so make sure you have something else planned for your cake flour if you buy a bag of it for this recipe.
My new pan
I was shopping at a kitchen supply store recently; unattended I might add. I have a glass 8 x 8 pan but the edges are sloped slightly. I saw this shiny object and figured it would be perfect for trying this brownie recipe. Not that I couldn’t have used my glass pan for this, however, I needed to justify my purchase to myself and making brownies was a good enough reason. Funny enough though, the recipe says a glass baking dish is preferred, but meh, the new pan it was!
And no, this was not the only thing I purchased on that trip but you will have to wait to see what other fun items I picked up.
I crack my eggs into a separate bowl before adding them to my recipe. I once cracked an egg directly into my baking only to realize the egg didn’t quite look right and I had to throw out my entire batter. Ever since then, I won’t risk it. I would rather wash another bowl.
And the results are….
I think it looks like the picture in the book! The brownies were dense and moist and very chocolatey. The peanut butter chips added to the flavour. It did make the 9 large brownies the recipe book called for but I cut a few of them in half since it was almost too big of a piece.
My family liked the brownies and so did I. This recipe by Williams Sonoma is a keeper! They were easy to make, with not a lot of ingredients or supplies required and pretty quick as well.
I found this version of the brownie recipe on the Williams-Sonoma website. It doesn’t give the ingredients by weight it’s basically the same.
Related post: Williams Sonoma – Baking Favorites – Recipe book review
Tell me what you think. Do you have a favorite go-to brownie recipe? Have you made this recipe before? Do you own this book? You can leave your comments down below or share your results over on Instagram @heidiswhatsburning