Very yummy brownies for passover.

Ingredients:

• 8 oz. bittersweet chocolate
• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted margarine
• 4 large eggs
• 266g cups sugar
• 1 cup matzo cake meal
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Prepare a 9 inch square baking pan. This can be done by greasing the pan directly or by greasing it, lining it with baking parchment, then greasing the parchment. The later is recommended, as the brownies come out of the pan more easily.
3. Chop up the chocolate into as little of pieces as your patience will allow. The smaller the pieces here, the quicker the melting. Assure that the knife, cutting board, your hands, etc. are completely and totally dry. No drops of water anywhere! Chop up your stick of margarine into at least 8 pieces, but 32 is even better. (No precision required in either of these chopping tasks).
4. Heat up some water in the bottom of a double boiler. Assure that the top half of the double boiler is completely dry on the inside. After bringing the water to a boiler, remove the double boiler from the heat and let the water cool slightly. Put the top half on and fill with the chocolate and margarine. Stir non-stop until it’s melted. If it seems to be taking forever, a little bit of heat is generally ok --- but not much. Turn the burner on low.
5. When your chocolate is completely melted - smooth, glossy, with no chunks of chocolate or margarine - pull the top piece of the double boiler off and set it aside to cool.
6. Toss the eggs into the bowl for a stand mixer. Add your sugar. Mix it a while. Get it good and mixed, using the paddle attachment.
7. Add your matzo and salt. I don’t measure my salt - and suspect that I use less than 1/4 tsp. In my book, less is better than more.
8. Get that mixed up good, then add your chocolate chips. I like Ghirardelli 60% cacoa chips. They’re easy to find in local grocers. I think they are part of the gooey-ness, as they’re quite large. Don’t put too many in.
9. Bake the whole thing for a while. It seems to take 20 to 25 minutes. Try hard not to over bake. Generally brownies crack on top and pull away from the pan slightly as they get done. They’ll be OK too gooey. They’ll be less exciting if dry and hard. They’ll get dry and hard quicker than you expect.
10. Cool. Slice. Eat. Diet.

Commentary

The ingredients for this recipe came from Doris Schechter’s My Most Favorite Dessert Company Cookbook, with slight modification. Specifically, Ms. Schechter suggests using miniature bittersweet chocolate chips. I’ve never seen such in a Baltimore City grocery store. (I made this comment in about 2010. A decade, and a move to Chicago later, and it still holds). Maybe the fancy suburban stores carry such a thing. I think my big fat Ghirardelli chips are quite yummy. The recipe doesn’t use very many of them, so you’ll have some left over to munch on if you are so inspired.

Some people include instructions for storing leftovers. I have not had experience doing so, and can therefore not make any suggestions.