We have some BIG chocolate fans here at EatingWell. So over the years, we’ve played around with the basic brownie recipe, dressing it up with everything from zucchini and black beans to pumpkin and dates.
But never have we ever tried this brilliant trick dreamed up by Chinese Australian cookbook author Hetty McKinnon.
The sauce in this recipe, which is from her new cookbook To Asia, With Love: Everyday Asian Recipes and Stories From the Heart ($35, Penguin Random House), is “the same idea as using salt,” McKinnon says during her TODAY show segment that aired on May 18. “The soy sauce amplifies the chocolaty flavors, bringing a rich caramel glow. The taste very much resembles salted caramel.“
This is a follow-up to a recipe for Vegemite Chocolate Brownies McKinnon shared on her website that “raised some eyebrows,” McKinnon tells Leite’s Culinaria. “The use of this yeasty, uber-umami sandwich spread in a brownie is surprising, but it brings a complex depth of flavor that is quite unique.”
woman making brownies Credit: Getty Images / MmeEmil
According to James Beard Award-winning food writer and Food Gal blogger Carolyn Jung who tested out these beauties herself, “The soy sauce is subtle tasting. It’s not like you bite into a square and automatically think ‘Chinese takeout food.’ Instead, the chocolate just tastes somehow more chocolate-y, with a deeper caramelized note and just a hint of salt…Never in a million years would I have thought of adding soy sauce to brownies. But I’m sure glad McKinnon did, because these just might be my new go-to brownies.”
Click here for the Flourless Soy Sauce Brownie recipe from the Brooklyn-based author and podcaster, and keep up with McKinnon’s latest kitchen adventures at arthurstreetkitchen.com.
woman making brownies Credit: Getty Images / MmeEmil
woman making brownies
Credit: Getty Images / MmeEmil
