Who Needs Yountville?

Whenever Munch and I are headed to St. Helena, we always make a stop at Bouchon Bakery. I usually get an assortment of macarons, a TKO (the Thomas Keller "Oreo") or two, and more recently, a couple of bouchons. Bouchons are made with the same recipe as the delicious dark chocolate brownies AudioDad & I had at our last ad hoc dinner, which I was determined to have the recipe for. After a little research, I found it reprinted from the Bouchon cookbook on the blog, Sunday Nite Dinner. So, no need to reinvent the wheel (Hooray!), and it was just as easy as mixing up a batch of brownies. I used both a muffin top pan (to approximate the mini-cake like brownies from ad hoc- it has 12 molds) and a mini-muffin tin (kinda like Costco brownie bites, but so much better! It had 24 little cups) to make the treats pictured above.

3/4 c. flour
1 c. dutch-process cocoa powder
1 tsp. salt
3 eggs
1 1/2 c. plus 3 tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
12 oz. unsalted butter, melted
6 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped (I used the new 72% cacao Ghirardelli chips and chopped them coarsely)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, and salt. In another bowl, combine the eggs and sugar and beat on medium speed until light yellow. Mix in the vanilla. Reduce mixer speed to low and add a third of the dry ingredients. Mix then add a third of the melted butter. Continue alternating adding dry ingredients then butter. Scrape bowl and add chopped chocolate. Mix well, then pour into the buttered and floured pan of your choice. Mini muffins took 17 minutes to bake, the muffin top pan took only 15 minutes because of its shallowness. These are done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean- but be sure not to overbake! Cool them for a few minutes on a rack before turning them out of the pans to cool completely. Dust the tops with powdered sugar before serving.