Sweet Tooth Factory II: Back In The Brownie

Brownie Basics

Turns out Sweet Tooth Factory don’t come along to the Southbank Food Market on every Friday, but they have this Friday. Turns out also that they have a selection that varies every time they turn up. Ah well. I had a hazelnut brownie today.

Brownie Backstory

Here’s the annoying thing. I’ve been trying to get back to Sweet Tooth Factory for ages. Remember how I had that s’more brownie and my overall verdict was that I was excited to try different brownies from this place. Since then, however, their schedule at the food market has been somewhat erratic and I’ve never yet managed to get there to get a brownie.

Well, except once, recently. I was rushing through the market on the way to get a lift to go to Darlington to go to a friend’s wedding (and sidebar: I am going to need to start coming up with a naming scheme for all these various friends and (ex-)partners I keep mentioning in these blogs) and decided to stop in to see if I could get a brownie for the road. Since Sweet Tooth Factory happened to be there, I picked up a brownie. But that was not this brownie.

That was a triple chocolate brownie, and I have a kinda cute story about it: I bought it because I felt that I hadn’t had a triple chocolate brownie for ages, and certainly I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about one. There were two servers, a guy and a girl. When I asked for the triple chocolate, the guy was all like “Yesssss!” which was not a reaction I expected. Turns out the triple chocolate brownies were his creation and he was very happy they were selling, which I thought was sweet. He also talked about their inspiration, which was more or less “Throw everything good into one brownie”, and how following that philosophy the triple chocolate brownies also had salted caramel in them.

I kept this brownie in my bag and didn’t really get a chance to eat it on the way to Darlington. When we finally arrived that night I was too busy catching up with old friends and drinking a few pints to give an accurate rating and review. And then I spent all of Saturday celebrating (let’s call her) Northern Friend getting married. I got quite drunk and more than a bit emotional, and one thing led to another, and I ate the brownie that night without really doing any of the things needed to do to write a blog post about it. It was damn delicious, though.

That was, by now, quite a long time ago. (Well, a matter of weeks, not months or years.) I eventually got back to the market on a day when Sweet Tooth Factory were there, but unfortunately they didn’t have any more of the delicious triple chocolate brownies, so for today I felt that the best option was this hazelnut brownie. Previous discussions about what sort of nut goes best with chocolate aside, hazelnut is a standard canonical choice: it’s the nut in Fruit & Nut, for example, and the nut in Nutella. I’ve not yet reviewed a hazelnut brownie though so it seemed like the right choice to me, expanding my blog horizons and varieties.

Anyway, here’s my scores for this brownie that I definitely didn’t eat on Friday afternoon when no-one was really doing any real work anyway.

Brownie Points

Taste: Sometimes I find the hazelnut flavour of hazelnut chocolate…things… to be overwhelming and almost cloying, but not here. This is a good balance of all the different ingredients. 8/10

Texture: Pretty good, maybe a little too chewy and thick overall, but if you’re going to go wrong in any direction, go wrong in that one. 7/10

Presentation: It looks competent. There’s a large crack in this brownie which I’m going to ascribe to me carrying it without being very delicate. 3/5

Value: At £3, it’s in the expected region for brownies from this market and is also a pretty good brownie, so I’ll give it a pretty good value score: 7/10

Fudge Factor: I’m sorry I don’t get to review the delicious triple-chocolate-goodness brownie, my bad, but it speaks to the friendliness of the staff here and (so far) the quality of their brownie. 3/5

Hazel Score Come In: 28

Should I Buy And Eat This Brownie?

Yeah, I’d recommend this. It’s a good brownie, if not massively exciting in and of itself. I think I’ve been correct in suggesting that the brownies from here are going to be pretty good overall and I look forward to eating and reviewing many more of their creations.

Closing Thought

Dermatophagia is a compulsion disorder of gnawing or biting one’s own skin, most commonly at the fingers.