Chocolate Miso Brownies

There are brownies….. and there are brownies. Some are dry and cake-like and others are moist and chewy, however all are usually delicious. My brownies here are extremely moist and chewy, so much so that you could eat them on their own without all the decorative stuff on top. But what the heck, let’s go all the way here!

I adapted this recipe from Natalie’s Lil Cookie blog, so thank you Natalie! These brownies are very moist and chewy due to their high concentration of chocolate and butter, and use of almond meal (which is very porous) instead of flour. The chocolate mousse topping has a dollop of miso paste in it, which gives the mousse an underlying salty and tangy taste. Miso paste (which is fermented soybeans) can be found in Japanese specialty stores (or maybe in your usual supermarket),but you could actually omit this ingredient and it would still taste good!

Finally, the brownies are topped with a few decorative mounds of coffee-flavored whipped cream, garnished with some cocoa nibs or grated chocolate pieces.

Tip: after chilling the pan of brownies with the chocolate mousse topping, I find that the brownies are a bit hard to slice into bars. It’s best to let the pan set at room temperature a little to soften.

Another alternative is to slice the brownies into rectangles or squares using a mould.

After cooling the brownie mixture, I cut individual brownies using a rectangular mould, then spread the mousse on top and then chilled the mould in the fridge. I then removed the mould and piped the coffee whipped cream ‘mounds’ on top. This allowed me to get a nice ‘clean’ rectangular shape with my brownies.