Current brownie count: 12

The inaugural subject of the Brownie Review, this concoction from Newtown's Ice + Slice Gelateria & Pizzeria was certainly a worthy contestant to kick things off with. Although certainly more pricey than the average, because of the included gelato, the taste more than compensated. $6.50 buys you a hefty brownie (what will almost certainly be the largest in the roundup, based on my previous experience), which is heated before they serve it - with a generous dollop of excellent gelato (your choice of flavour), plus assorted accoutrements like cream and chocolate sauce. As a judge on Iron Chef would say, the cold of the gelato creates a pleasing contrast with the warmth of the heated portion. The brownie itself is perhaps a little simple, without nuts or other additions, though it is questionable how well these would go with heating and gelato, so this is not really a great downside. On the whole, the king of brownies, at a royal price. It remains to be seen whether the competitors can deliver more brownie for my buck, but the review has certainly begun with a bang.

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JNSQ: + 1

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From the rich and luxurious, now to the cheap and cheerful. I picked up this brownie to kill time while waiting for a connecting train at Sutherland station. Firstly, don't be put off by the nondescript appearance - that's just moisture on top, not mould, so blame my ineptness at photography rather than the bakers. For the low, low price of only $1.70, this represents a good value offering - sufficiently moist and substantially sized, with some nuts for good measure. (As an aside, it was quite fortunate that I got this one early in the piece, as its similarity to a generic mudcake has caused me to reassess the line defining exactly what a brownie is.) Although it won't win any awards for gourmet taste or creative flair, the fact that you can buy one with a single gold coin deserves to be rewarded.

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Since time immemorial, humankind has asked the question, "exactly what is a brownie?" In its quest for enlightenment, it developed dictionary.com ("A bar of moist, usually chocolate cake, often with nuts.") and Wikipedia ("a small, rich, chocolate cake, similar to a cookie, named after its rich brown color. It is sometimes covered with fudge and may contain nuts, chips (chocolate, butterscotch, peanut butter, etc.), or cannabis"). The emphasis being on cake rather than slice, this offering from the eponymous Michel is perhaps not technically valid, but they had no explicitly-labelled brownies, so I bought what was closest. And although Gymea bakeries are generally not so Bohemian as to include hashish in their wares, this was pretty nice. Not amazing for the $2.90 price (which is fairly middle-of-the-road), but filling and sweet. There are always more stores in the same chain who might be able to provide something closer to the true definition of brownie, so the French needn't surrender just yet.

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Much as the dinosaurs were outgunned in the evolutionary race by the nimble and intelligent mammals, it appears that the juggernaught that is the store-bought brownie may succumb to a whole new class of competitor, the packet mix. Okay, so the dinosaurs were mostly killed by a comet impact with the force of 100 trillion tonnes of TNT, but the improper comparison should not get in the way of the goodness of home cooking. The JNSQ point is for getting to eat (as Tristan suggested) the brownie mix while you're making it, and the feeling of domestic competence that comes from making something (even if the process is 'combine ingredients, mix, cook'). This specific mix was very good, too, with walnuts (a little hard to notice them though) and caramel (which they supplied way too much of, always better to have an oversupply). The cooked brownies had the characteristic 'density gradient' that brownies should have: soft when you first bite, but then getting harder as you bite down (in contrast to cakes, for example, which are always soft). It cost $3.79 plus my invaluable labour time (and eggs). At right, I eat about two-thirds of the tray at once.

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JNSQ: + 1

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Catering to the cashed-up bourgeoisie of today's society, Gloria Jean's is a familiar sight in many a Sydney shopping district (though it doesn't appear to have yet achieved the massive presence of Starbucks, which has taken to opening stores across the street from other stores). They're not afraid to charge, either - this morsel cost $3.50 - but in their defence, they do make sure it's worth it. To quote Mr. Bean: "Well, it's quite big, because if it was really small, you know, microscopic, then hardly anyone would be able to see it, which would be a tremendous shame." In this case, eat might be more appropriate than see, but the point remains. Taste-wise, it's an exercise in balance: rich without giving you an instant sugar headache, soft without disintegrating in your hands, and containing nuts and chocolate bits, but not in such quantities to make you fee like you're munching on gravel. Overall, I think it actually tastes rather like my own brownies - perhaps a bit nicer, but you pay more for not having to get your hands dirty. Oh, and try their chocolate hazelnut slice ('Charlotte Slice', I think it's called) for a similar price - it's also very good.

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In order to be fair to the fine people at Cafe Chocolat, I have to preface this review by saying that a full 24 hours elapsed between me buying this brownie and eating it, owing to two bouts of amnesia and my lack of a camera phone. Thus the quality might have been a bit below their normal standards; however, you'd want the quality to be a fair bit higher in order to justify the $3.90 that I paid for this. It was quite good, but very crumbly (possibly the age here) and without any nuts. Although this was called a 'triple chocolate fudge brownie', It's difficult to ascertain exactly what they mean by 'triple chocolate': obviously it has a chocolate body, and there was some sort of lumpy chocolate inside which was nice, but the third use of the 'food of the gods' has left me hanging. I would hate to see a situation where patisseries everywhere felt that they could simply bandy about titles like 'quadruple chocolate fudgemallow delight' and 'extra-multi chocolate backflip with half twist' without any real justification. A sad day that would be for all those like me in the business of brownies.

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BB's Espresso on level 3 of the Wentworth Building has apparently decided to ring in the New Year with an across-the-board price rise. Although this will force me to moderate my purchasing of their muffins, I sacrificed my better monetary sensibilities on the altar of Reviewing, and forked out $3.90. Was it worth it? Considering what you could get elsewhere for that, probably not. Although it did suffer from the train ride home, and originally looked better than the photo shows it to be, it still wasn't that great. The obvious presence of nuts was a plus (too many brownies seem to be 'castrated' these days, so to speak), and a separate layer of chocolate icing on top was good, if a little unorthodox. But the brownie also included some sort of weird fruity thing; it reminded me of sultanas but I'm sure it couldn't be, no baker is that stupid. Since I'm really not a fan of dried grapes and their relations, this taste was insurmountably annoying. So although BB's is conveniently located, I would advise you to steer clear of this particular offering. Better yet, go buy something from a USU store and keep your student organisations alive.

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Vickers at Hurstville Station has stormed into the Review with this tasty and well-priced offering. For only $2, you get a chunky serving of chocolatey goodness, so this definitely represents value for your hard owned money (more dough for your dough, I guess). The brownie is also replete with plenty of walnuts, just as it should be. The icing on top seems to be the add-on du jour at the moment; I can't help thinking it's a bit weird on something which isn't meant to be a classical cake, but it doesn't really detract. The whole thing was a bit soft and tending towards a mud-cake-with-nuts rather than a true brownie, but in the words of Kim Beazley (who has probably eaten his fair share of cakes in his time, by the look of him), "You can be a bit niggardly about these things." Overall this is a great brownie at an extremely competitive price: I predict that so many people will use $2 coins to buy them up, we will lose touch with our Aboriginal heritage.

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Anyone who shops at Greenwood Plaza in North Sydney is somewhat spoiled for choice when it comes to baked treats. Right next to the shop where I bought this was a Muffin Break, also offering brownies (which will get a review later) and a Jamaica Blue cafe, although their $4.50 brownie looked so overpriced that it would have been the first brownie to fail this review had I not decided to steer clear of it entirely. Lucky then that Red Mango carried the torch with a bit more ability. The icing on top was great because it was more like a chocolate coating than traditional thick, sweet cake icing - you might realise by now that I think brownies should not be too much like plain chocolate cakes. The whole thing was very soft which accentuated the large walnuts, another positive. However, possibly the best part was the price: at $2.50, this represents substantial value - pick one up if you're in the neighbourhood.

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Crispy Inn at Newtown is apparently open 24 hours a day, so if you're ever feeling like a midnight morsel it might be one of your only options. Fortunately for you, it's not at all bad. To start with, this brownie has more nuts than Batman's Arkham City Asylum. (*Ticks box for Obligatory Unsubtle Pop-Culture Reference.*) The walnuts come in two layers: one on the icing, which is not abnormal, and oddly an entire layer on the bottom. While there are plenty, they're not overwhelming because the brownie itself is decently-sized. The texture is probably a bit too cake-like; or more accurately there is a lack of any firm sides as there probably should be, especially from a shop with Crispy explicitly in its name. On the whole, this is another well-made dessert/snack but unfortunately strays a bit from the strict definition of a brownie. The factor that might sway your decision to buy it is the excellent price, which I was think was $2.50. Grab one if you already spent $14,000 on smoothies at Ice + Slice and don't have enough money to get their brownie/gelato combo.

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At the time I walked into Azzuri's out-of-the-way location in Wentworth, The Brownie Review was at a crossroads. I was facing the realisation that my continued harping-on about defining brownies (versus cakes) was getting a bit monotonous, and I was even getting a bit unsure about whether I was justified in claiming that all of these recent entries were too soft to be real brownies, considering that they were all quite similar. As I was wrestling with this dilemma, weighing up whether supporting the cause of pure brownie traditions was worth boring the reader and possibly saying something that made no sense anyway, Azzuri's came to the rescue like that ruggedly handsome Errol Flynn in a Thirties swashbuckling movie.
With a perfect dense consistency, a liberal but not excessive dosage of nuts mixed through, and managing to do without a random thick layer of chocolate icing on top, this is everything a brownie should be. This is not to say that it's everything a brownie could be: there's not a great deal of originality here, but sometimes just getting the basics right can be equally valuable. Also appealing is the price, which at $3.00 is quite competitive. So I'll be eating plenty of these, which hopefully might shut me up for long enough that I can't launch into another rant about cakes.

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I write this review from the shade of a Moreton Bay Fig tree in Hyde Park, watching the setting sun light up the spires of St Mary's Cathedral. Yes, friends, this review is the start of a new era in the Brownie Review: the mobile write-up. No more will candidates have to survive a train trip home before reviewing; the combination of a digital camera and my laptop will now ensure that I can photograph, eat and comment on anything I buy within minutes of purchase. And what better way to start this new go-everywhere mentality than with a company that is everywhere: Starbucks. This brownie cost $3.50, which for the size is fairly standard. As taste goes, it was definitely above-average, with a firm consistency, a nice amount of walnuts and an excellent flavour which wasn't too sweet. A detracting feature, however, was the layer of cocoa dusted on top, which might be good in theory but was too thick and consequently left me tasting bitter cocoa with most bites and a nice brown coating over my hand when I'd finished. I think icing sugar still works better on top but it probably depends on how the rest of the brownie tastes too. In any case, this was pretty tasty and a reasonable feed for the price but could have been thought through a little better.

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