Passover Brownies

This will definitely be my go-to Passover brownies recipe. If you’re not familiar with Passover baked goods, you may be surprised at the unusual taste of these Passover brownies, which are made with matzo flour instead of regular flour. Most Passover cakes, brownies, cookies, etc. have a different taste and texture due to the matzo flour. If you’re familiar with Passover baking, you’ll quickly recognize these as the best Passover brownies ever. They’re wonderful, chewy, chocolatey, and easily the best Passover brownies I’ve had.

It’s an easy one-bowl recipe, no mixer needed, and absolutely delicious. If you’re making matzo flour from whole matzos, do it in a blender rather than a food processor. A food processor doesn’t seem to get the matzo ground fine enough. After trying it in my food processor, I gave up and processed the large crumbs in my spice grinder, and it came out perfectly as very fine flour. I didn’t have any brandy so I substituted Passover chocolate liqueur, which gave the brownies an amazing taste. I used all semisweet chocolate since that was what I had in my pantry and it was too stormy outside to warrant a trip to the store.

I used an 8-inch round pan—again, it was what I had on hand. One thing to watch out for—after 25 minutes, I tested the brownies with a toothpick, which came out sticky, so back in the oven for another 4 minutes they went. I tested them again in a few minutes with the same results. After 40 minutes in the oven, I tried poking them in a few different places and discovered that the places where the tester came out sticky was where I had stuck it into the chopped chocolate. In spite of this, the brownies didn’t seem overdone. Another thing—when I cut the brownies, the top crust sort of crumbled, but for some reason this isn’t unusual with Passover brownies.

I’m not at all certain whether all the ingredients I used for this Passover brownies recipe would pass muster for keeping kosher for the holiday. I used the full 1/2 cup walnuts, because I am far from a person who hates nuts in brownies. (I actually don’t think brownies are worth eating if they don’t have nuts!) I used approximately 1/3 cup mini semisweet chips. Because I wanted to serve these to someone who is alcohol-free, I used apple juice in place of the brandy.

I baked the brownies in an 8-inch Pyrex pan and didn’t adjust the temperature downward to compensate for the glass dish as is sometimes recommended. I melted the chocolate with the butter on the stove, as I’m not a big fan of microwaves. I baked these for a full 50 minutes. I let them cool for 15 minutes before cutting. They were nicely moist, not at all cakey, a little bit grainy, but with great taste. They were substantially fudgier than cake. One of my tasters commented that if I had served these with ice cream, and not mentioned the matzo meal replacement for flour, she would not have noticed anything different about them. They were definitely rich and chocolaty, but not so much so as to be cloying or overwhelming.

The serving range of 8 to 12 is accurate, though I confess that 8 is more accurate than 12. I had an extra brownie later in the evening, to see what would happen to the texture as it cooled, and it did become a little less crumbly but without losing any of the fudgy rich deliciousness.

Although I don’t always have matzo meal on hand, if I did, and I was to have a need for brownies, this recipe could be used on a year-round basis, they were that good. As for the ingredients, I happened to have Swedish vanilla sugar on hand, the perfect ingredient for this half-Swedish, half-Jewish baker to use in Passover brownies, so I used 1 tablespoon in place of the 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. There was very little cleanup.