(Barry gasps)
(bright intro music)
- Hello, everybody. It's Barry here.
Hope you are well, wherever you are in the world.
Welcome to our kitchen and today I'm trying out this thing.
This is the brownie maker, which looks
a lot like one of them toastie machines.
I haven't even checked, but it probably does have
the green, red light combination on it.
It was £12. Mrs. B knows me so well now
she's like, yeah, you're just gonna wanna use this
in a video, stuck it in my office the other day,
I'm like, okay. Yeah, that's cool.
I'll will try that out.
So apparently this thing, heat and eat,
compact and easy to use, it is basically,
makes the perfect brownies every time.
Now, brownies in our house,
there's a recipe that Mrs. B and I enjoy making.
What we're gonna do, we're gonna compare it.
We love brownies here.
We're gonna make the generic recipe
that they've got on the side,
we're then gonna make the awesome brownies
that we love, in the oven, but then also use that batter,
if this even works and put it in here as well
and compare them all together.
One, to see if you can get brownies from this,
because to be honest, that's actually pretty darn cool.
Yeah, you could take it camping or something.
Imagine that. You haven't got an oven,
but yeah, as long as you've got an electrical outlet
or a cigarette lighter port, ooh.
Yeah, your camping would go up an extra notch,
so let's get this out the box and go to brownie town.
Aha. Look, it's got a security seal.
(Barry singing)
And in fact, it's a true story,
if you lift this flap, listen.
(tap tearing) (seal honking)
Got to say, the box is, oh my gosh.
That's wedged in. Have to use my strong hand.
Oh my gosh. Ah!
Oh my gosh. Why?
Ah! Oof!
No. Oh my, we actually pulled it out the machine.
Oh my gosh. Well, I'm gonna have
to cut that open, first time ever opening a box.
And that includes my life outside
of making videos on the internet.
(scissors crunching)
Oh my gosh. That felt so good
to just let that get out of there.
Polystyrene, Princess Leia.
So I guess that's a little clip to hold it in place.
Yep. Aw.
(laughs) It's like, ow!
It's like a baby's toy.
These are like just oversized ice cube tray size.
All right, so I had a little look through the instructions.
One of the things that stands out is to not use it outside,
so the camping dream is kinda shattered, I'm afraid.
I mean, I'm not saying don't do it, but.
(plug switch clicks)
And a red light has appeared.
There's nothing really visual to see.
No, but that factory odour smell.
Oh yeah. That's pretty potent right now.
It's ready to go.
Let's get on with these ingredients ready
and make said brownie.
First step, put the butter and chocolate pieces
in a heat proof bowl and stand over a pan of hot water
until melted, stirring occasionally.
Or you could do this.
(upbeat music cut in)
30 second blast, stirry, stirry, stirry.
Melted butter, chocolate, nice.
I got a of chocolate, on my instructions,
but you do need to stir it in between.
It's actually about 90 seconds in total.
Now this is a much different recipe to the one that we do,
to the extent when it says beat the eggs, this is all we do.
(fork tapping)
This is some light brown sugar.
Makes you realise how naughty brownies are though.
So we stir that through until the sugar is dissolved.
There's some self raising flour.
I'm not using that in ours.
Use plain flour, but hey ho.
With salt in straight into that chocolate mix and fold.
We try and do this as little as possible
to keep as much as air in as we can.
I feel like these are going to be more stodgy ones.
But hey, you're not gonna turn down a brownie, are you?
A brownie is, it's a good thing.
So here are our beaten eggs. Boom.
And we just fold this through.
Now I've got a little bit of milk to one side
'cause once this is incorporated,
we will trying to get a dripping consistency,
whatever that is, I'm sure when I see it in a minute,
I'll be like, oh yes, that's a dripping consistency.
But right now this looks very weird.
Oh my gosh. (laughs)
I mean, that's a dripping consistency, isn't it?
So I've got some milk leftover.
(Barry swallowing)
And I felt like a cat for a minute.
Now I've got a little bit of oil here
and on the instructions, it does say
to just lightly grease the tin.
And apparently we fill this two thirds of the way up.
In other news I just broke my spatula.
Yeah, (laughs) that is a dripping consistency,
'cause I just dripped some more on my work surface.
Now that is probably about a tablespoon size there,
allowing that two thirds height,
perhaps with the self raising flour,
it should expand all the way up.
But, spoiler alert, I have got a lot of that leftover.
Carefully, unclasp the safety lock
and lift the cover by the handle,
pour your brownie mixture two thirds of the way up.
Yep. Done that.
Ooh, crikey. That's amazing.
Close the lid, baking the brownies
will take approximately 10 to 15 minutes.
At 10 minutes, carefully lift the lid up
and check the brownies by sticking a stick
in the mixture. That's right.
I'm just gonna go to my local woods,
get a stick off a tree and stab it in my brownies.
I think a bamboo skewer will be fine.
So let's give it a 10 minutes.
I'll clean this mess up (laughs)
and I'll go get myself a stick from the forests.
- [Narrator] Several bad puns later.
- The smell I'm getting, of course the factory smell
has banished, but I'm getting rather than
a freshly baked smell, I'm getting a hot batter.
I can't explain it. I've not peaked yet.
Got my skewer ready. Ah.
Ooh. That is naughty.
And one thing I forgot to say, is this hinge,
is perfectly at 90 degrees.
Normally you get a little bit more so it falls back,
even with a slightest nudge, look.
(brownie maker claps closed)
That is one downside to it. But it's risen.
This flat plate has kept the brownies well, flat.
But it stopped them rising up.
And at the same time, cooks them. Oh my gosh.
(brownie maker claps closed)
That's come out clean. Let's get them out.
I'm just being a little bit extra cautious
using oven gloves, but that will be...
Mm, fa, sha, that is hot.
Look at them. Slightly, would you say burnt?
I don't know. On the camera,
they look more burnt than, well, charred on the top.
To me, they look like good colour,
but these two at the front maybe catching
the light a little bit, yeah.
That is still a little warm.
(pan scraping grid)
In fact, very warm (laughs).
(metal tapping)
I feel like I should do this meet up one day
on the beach in my hometown in the summer, obviously.
And we just do this big sand castle,
making me up or something like that.
Oh my gosh. That's symmetrical.
Wow. (laughs)
That is so cool.
I'm actually really impressed by that.
We'll let this cool down, but I think I will do later on,
another batch with chocolate chunks in
just to see if that works, 'cause why not?
I've got some leftover. Let's take a bite then.
(Barry chewing)
Do you know what? If I was at a village fete,
a fair, a cake sale and someone said, there's a brownie.
And it's like, okay.
Or bought them from a shop
in a multi pack, that's a brownie.
Uh yeah. It would pass as a brownie.
I mean, it's much more, it's solid and firm
like a chocolate cake. I'm really surprised.
I was kind of hoping and praying,
just a slight gooey middle.
But I've got enough of that batter mixture left,
that I can make some more,
with actual chocolate pieces in it.
But before I do that, I'm gonna make some
of the brownies that we normally do.
This is how we do it and then we'll try some
of that in this.
So to make gooey brownies the way we like it,
we start off pretty much the same steps,
by getting some butter and some good quality dark chocolate
into a bowl and again, blasting that
in a microwave on 30 second blast.
As we found out today, 90 seconds does that,
till nice and smooth.
For this recipe, you don't really
sort of use self raising flour,
you're driving air into it and the eggs
play a key part to that.
What you wanna do, is get your sugar
and your eggs into a big old bowl,
whizz that up with an electric whisk
for a good five minutes and as you do that,
you'll notice that first of all, the sugar integrates,
but then it should end up being nice and thick and creamy.
Put the electric whisk away now, you don't wanna do it.
It's all about a spatula now.
Still got my trusty one as you'll see now.
By the time those eggs are whisked and thickened,
the chocolate would have cooled,
which is fine to now add in there with the mixture,
folding it with your spatula.
Now, as you go, it won't feel like much is happening.
Then it will get a little chocolatey,
a little bit light, then it'll get darker,
you'll see there's more and more streaks
until you keep going.
And you end up with this gorgeous dark chocolate
infused lake.
(spatula thumping)
And I just knocked my hand on the spatula,
I'm not sure if you heard that.
That was the spatula I was using actually.
My other one's broken.
So we're not using self raising flour or baking flour
wherever you are in the world,
we're just using standard plain flour
with cocoa powder in the same sieve together,
tapping that onto that mixture and again, folding through,
but only until just incorporated.
Now we can push in the chocolate chunks,
I've got mixture of white and milk here.
Push that in and just incorporate it in.
Add it into a prepared tin and bake it in the oven.
Now that's what I'm doing right now
until it's all nice and papery and crunchy on the top
and it comes away at the sides.
It's not really a timing thing,
but they should be super gooey.
The good thing is I got a little bit left
that we can actually put in the machine
with chocolate chunks in it.
And it's interesting, this other one that we made
with the mix is almost like cooked itself
whilst I've just left it to one side.
So we'll add some chocolate chunks in with that
to see if that works too.
Let's bake them up and then get them in the toaster machine.
I am gonna add some chocolate chunks into their recipe.
I mean, it doesn't tell me not to do this,
so you could say I'm being a bit of a whisk taker
and just, oh my gosh that's so stiff
to try and incorporate that together.
I'm gonna have to loosen that up.
That has dried out. But I'm hoping,
having the chocolate in the centre might give it
a little bit of gooeyness
'cause it was quite a stodgy mix.
So what we'll do, ooh, it does look a lot glossier
with the milk in, freshly oiled tray.
Now in the other half here, we're gonna use
the brownie mix that I've got in the oven,
our preferred one, which normally takes 25 minutes
in the oven, this took 10.
And just see what that does.
All right, here we go. In it goes and I,
yep, you gotta watch yourself on those little shelves.
Down it goes.
- [Narrator] Eventually...
- All right, it's been 10 minutes. Smells good.
Ooh. Ooh, my gosh.
Oh. Uh, hmm.
Okay. So these ones are definitely done.
Oh my gosh. I think I can get those out.
I will. In fact, I'll do it now.
(brownie maker clanking)
You see, look, these are the ones that are in the tin.
Look at that cracked, papery surface,
coming away from the edges.
I mean, this has kind of stayed to the edge.
It looks more gooey than this one.
Obviously this is related to the one from the machine,
it's just with the chocolate chunks in.
I dunno what's gonna happen here.
I mean, these have got to cool.
Let's just give these a minute.
Will they be fudgy?
'Cause we can see that, you know, pretty dry.
But if I break into this one, oh, it's dry
but can you see that little chocolate puddle there?
Oh. We have actually helped it
because the melted chocolate in there
has given it some gooeyness.
The rest of it, unfortunately, is still quite cakey.
So to me, it's not really a brownie.
But what about my gooey ones that are in the oven,
which we'll try in a moment?
Ah! That's better.
Can you see that slightly gooey filling in the middle?
(Barry chewing)
Oh my gosh. That is amazing.
I need to contact the creators of this
and give them the recipe that I've used
because that has actually worked.
Look. A sort of fudgy, gooey centre with melted chocolate.
Oh! I am so glad that I did that
because it's like, oh yeah, everyone will just grab
the box and do the recipe on there.
But we've proved that if you upgrade the recipe,
it can actually upgrade the machine itself.
So my initial reaction was like, yeah,
it's kinda like stodgy muffins.
That actually makes brownies. Stonking.
Yes! Oh.
(brownie crunching)
But if I just show you, can you see that?
How you got that sort of fudgy centre?
Almost, not battery, but cake like and squishy.
It's a little bit more moist, you know?
Gorgeous. So, so good.
Just a real hint of the gooeyness,
it kind of melts in your mouth.
But I have to be honest, the little version
of the ones that we did in the maker,
kind of achieved that.
So I'm gonna say that this thing,
yes this £12 brownie maker, does get my seal of approval.
The only thing, the worst thing about it,
is that rubbish hinge.
But baya, it's blimming stonking.
See you next time.
♪ I'm a (indistinct) rapper baby ♪
♪ Ain't science in the label ♪
♪ But I'm spreading out these lyrics ♪
♪ Like topping on a bagel ♪
♪ Cooking is the shizzle ♪
♪ So don't you get stressed ♪
♪ Just get a hot pan and some chicken breast ♪
Oh, so good. Oh!
See that papery crust?
I mean, that's the only way I can describe it is look,
it's like paper, it's falling off.
Compare that with that original recipe.
Yeah. I mean, that's just a cake, but hey.
These did it. So that's gonna be my new best friend.