Cassia & black cardamom spiced milk chocolate brownies with salted palm sugar caramel
When I first started cooking, it was in English kitchens, pubs and then rosette hotels around Oxfordshire, long before I’d pounded a single curry paste. That’s where I learned to make about a million different chocolate brownies, so it’s one bake I could probably do in my sleep.
This one takes that English kitchen brownie and gives it the warm spices that sit underneath a massaman. Cassia bark and black cardamom seeds get toasted gently in a dry pan and ground to a powder, then stirred straight into the warm chocolate. Black cardamom isn’t the green kind with a bit of a tan. It’s dried over fire, so it smells of smoke and camphor, and next to milk chocolate it tastes like a bonfire at the bottom of the garden. Over the top goes a salted palm sugar caramel, because if you’re going rich you might as well commit. A few threads of makrut lime leaf and a snow of icing sugar cut through it all.
Cassia & Black Cardamom Brownies with Palm Sugar Caramel
Serves: 12 | Prep: 25 mins | Cook: 40 mins
Ingredients
For the spice:
4 black cardamom pods (not green, they’re not interchangeable)
10g cassia bark (about 2 pieces, roughly 8cm long; cinnamon sticks will do, but they’re softer, so use 15g)
For the brownies:
225g unsalted butter (plus a little extra for the tin)
350g caster sugar
250g milk chocolate (at least 35% cocoa solids, broken into pieces)
5 medium eggs (beaten)
150g plain flour
50g cocoa powder
For the salted palm sugar caramel:
150g palm sugar (grated or finely chopped)
2 tbsp water
150ml double cream
30g unsalted butter
1 tsp flaky sea salt (Maldon), plus more to taste
To finish:
4 makrut lime leaves (fresh or frozen, centre stalk removed)
Icing sugar (for dusting)
Method
Heat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan). Line a 20 x 30cm tin with baking parchment and rub a little butter round the rim so the edges release cleanly.
Split the black cardamom pods with your thumbnail, tip out the sticky black seeds and throw away the husks. Snap the cassia into small pieces. Toast both in a dry pan over a low heat for 2 to 3 minutes, shaking the pan, until the cassia smells sweet and woody and the cardamom smells of smoke. Keep the heat low. Burnt cassia goes bitter and there’s no hiding it under chocolate. Tip it all onto a plate to cool, then grind it to a fine powder in a spice grinder or pestle and mortar and sieve out any woody bits.
Melt the butter and sugar together in a large pan over a low heat, stirring, until the butter has melted and the sugar has mostly dissolved. Don’t let it boil. Take it off the heat, add the chocolate and the spice powder, leave it for a minute, then whisk until smooth and glossy. The heat of the butter is enough to melt the chocolate. Milk chocolate catches far more easily than dark, so it never goes over direct heat.
Leave the mix for 5 minutes so it’s warm rather than hot, or the eggs will scramble. Whisk in the eggs a little at a time until the mix thickens and turns glossy. Sift in the flour and cocoa and fold it all together until you can’t see a single streak of flour.
Pour the mix into the tin, level it and bake for 25 to 30 minutes. It’s ready when the top has a thin, papery crust, the edges are set and a skewer pushed into the middle comes out with sticky crumbs rather than wet batter. The centre should still have a slight wobble, and it sets as it cools. Five minutes too long and you’ve made chocolate cake.
Leave it to cool completely in the tin, then chill it for at least an hour so it cuts cleanly.
For the caramel, put the palm sugar and water in a small, heavy pan over a low heat until the sugar melts. Turn the heat up a little and let it bubble for 2 to 3 minutes, until it darkens a shade, the bubbles turn big and slow, and it smells of toffee with a hint of smoke. Palm sugar has a caramel flavour before you’ve even started, so it goes from perfect to burnt much faster than white sugar. Don’t walk away from it. Take it off the heat and pour in the cream, standing back because it will spit, and whisk until smooth. Whisk in the butter and the salt.
Taste the caramel. You should taste the sweetness first, then the salt, then a deep toffee flavour underneath. If the salt doesn’t show up, add more a pinch at a time. Leave it to cool until it’s thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
Roll the lime leaves up tightly and slice them as thin as you possibly can with a sharp knife. Thick strips are like chewing a bay leaf.
Cut the brownie into 12 squares, wiping a warm knife clean between cuts. Spoon the caramel over each one so it runs down the sides, scatter over the lime leaf and dust with icing sugar just before serving.
Chef’s notes
Black cardamom and green cardamom are different spices that happen to share a name. Green gives you something floral and soapy, which is the wrong direction entirely here. If you can’t find black, leave it out and go up to 15g of cassia rather than swap it. Cassia is the same bark I use for the sugar on the Banana Roti with Condensed Milk & Cassia Bark Sugar, so a bag won’t go to waste.
You can make everything ahead. The brownies keep for four days in an airtight tin and the caramel keeps for a week in the fridge. Warm the caramel gently in a pan before you use it. Cut the lime leaves at the last minute, because they darken and lose their perfume within the hour.
Warm the brownies for 10 seconds in the microwave before the caramel goes on and the whole thing turns into a pudding. If that’s the mood you’re in, the Spiced Pumpkin and Sang Som Rum Sticky Toffee Pudding is the next stop.
This base has been through some strange places. I once made it with cricket flour for Eat Grub, a company that makes food out of insects, who wanted something people scared of insects would actually eat. Milk chocolate hides a lot. The crickets didn’t make it onto this page.
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Sauces and pastes for cooking Thai at home at payst.co.uk. For more recipes, signed copies of my cookbooks are available at Payst: Cook Thai and Thai in 7.
Head chef & founder of Farang London restaurant. Cookbook author of ‘Cook Thai’ & ‘Thai in 7’. Chief curry paste basher and co-founder of Payst London.
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