Texas Roadhouse Big Ol' Brownie: How to Make It at Home

Home reconstruction

The thing people usually get wrong about the Big Ol' Brownie is that they try to make a brownie. It is a dessert build — a thick brownie square, warmed, topped with vanilla ice cream, caramel, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and pecans. The brownie is maybe a third of what is on the plate.

Texas Roadhouse lists it on their own dessert menu, so the components are not a secret. The proportions are what nobody writes down.

What is on the plate

From Texas Roadhouse's published menu description and the nutrition information they make available, the dessert is:

• a large brownie square, served warm
• vanilla ice cream
• caramel sauce
• chocolate sauce
• whipped cream
• chopped pecans

Two things follow from that list. First, it is enormous — the published nutrition puts it well over 1,000 calories, which is why it is usually shared. Second, the brownie is dense and fudgy rather than cakey, because a cakey brownie collapses under warm ice cream.

The brownie

You want a fudgy brownie with a high fat-to-flour ratio. Cakey brownies go soggy the moment the ice cream starts melting.

• 200 g butter
• 200 g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
• 250 g caster sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 100 g plain flour
• 30 g cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

Note the ratio: 100 g of flour to 200 g of butter. That is what makes it fudgy. A standard cake recipe would have twice the flour.

Method

1. 1. Heat the oven to 180°C / 350°F. Line a 20 cm square tin.
2. 2. Melt the butter and chocolate together, gently, and let it cool for five minutes. Hot chocolate mixture scrambles the eggs.
3. 3. Whisk the sugar into the eggs until the mixture is pale and thickened. This is what gives a brownie the papery top.
4. 4. Fold the chocolate mixture in.
5. 5. Sift the flour, cocoa and salt over, and fold until just combined. Stop as soon as you cannot see flour.
6. 6. Bake 25–30 minutes. The centre should still wobble slightly. A clean skewer means you have overbaked it.
7. 7. Cool in the tin completely, then cut into six large squares.

Cutting warm brownies is how you get a tray of rubble. Cool it fully, cut it, then warm the individual squares.

Building the dessert

This is the part that makes it the restaurant version rather than a brownie.

1. 1. Warm the brownie square. Twenty seconds in a microwave, or five minutes in a low oven. It should be warm enough that the ice cream starts going at the edges.
2. 2. Ice cream on top, one generous scoop of vanilla. On top, not beside.
3. 3. Caramel first, then chocolate. In that order — the caramel is thicker and sits on the ice cream, the chocolate runs down the sides.
4. 4. Whipped cream.
5. 5. Pecans last, so they stay crunchy.

Serve it immediately. The whole thing is built around the contrast between the warm brownie and the cold ice cream, and you have about four minutes before that contrast is gone.

Getting it closer

Underbake by two minutes. The restaurant version is noticeably gooey in the middle. Home bakers reliably overbake brownies because a skewer test tells them to.

Cut them bigger than feels sensible. A sixth of a 20 cm tin is a large piece. That is the point.

Toast the pecans. Five minutes in a dry pan. The restaurant ones taste toasted and it is the cheapest upgrade on the plate.

Storing it

The brownie keeps four days in an airtight tin at room temperature, and freezes well for three months, wrapped individually. That is the useful part — make the tray once, freeze the squares, and build the dessert one at a time.

Do not assemble in advance. There is no version of this that survives being made ahead.