Throwdown with Bobby Flay - Vermont Brownie Company

There's no I in team. But there's I in win. And there's an I in brownie. It's gonna be fudgy. One of the tastiest words in the English language, brownies. Shauna and Catherine have a real hands-on approach to baking. Good luck in there. And their Vermont goat cheese brownie is a big seller. Perfect. But I have my own brownie ideas. I think these are perfect. So I'm crashing their bash. No! But am I sneaking a taste of my own defeat? Hey, hey, hey! My name is Bobby Flay. My mission? To find the best of the best. My objective? Perfecting their signature dish. The plan of attack? I'm showing up to challenge them. But they don't know it. I may win. I might even lose. It's anybody's game. It's the ultimate throwdown. All right. Let's see what the next throwdown is. Brownies. That's a good one. Shauna Litsky and Catherine Hayward of Vermont Brownie Company in South Hero, Vermont. I'm Shauna. I'm Catherine. Welcome to Vermont. Shauna Litsky and Catherine Hayward have always been great friends. So when they found themselves suddenly out of work, they saw it was the perfect opportunity to start their own business together. The result of this partnership is the Vermont Brownie Company, a thriving business that supports the local community and makes some of the most distinctive brownies out there. Our Chev Brownie is Catherine's creation. Essentially, it's a brownie with a layer of Chev mixture and then layered on top of brownies again. I applaud the goat cheese idea because I would love a brownie like that. It's a very courageous move. Shauna and Catherine think Food Network is bringing back the show Recipe for Success, featuring self-made business owners. The dark chocolate Chev Brownie is definitely sophisticated. Your mission for this throwdown is to create an equally grown-up brownie with a decadent chocolate flavor that will give Shauna and Catherine a run for their money. I don't brag about it. Shauna does. I can brag because Catherine came up with it. It's a shame. I'm not bragging. You know, the goat cheese brownies is sort of like a grown-up version of a brownie. But I think I'm going to go with something a little bit more whimsical, maybe chocolate and marshmallows or chocolate and peanut butter or something like that. Something that, you know, is fun. I mean, come on, it's a brownie. All right, Shauna and Catherine, get your brownies in the oven because I'm coming to Vermont and I'm expecting a sweet victory. Every story begins somewhere, and this one began in a typically Vermont fashion. The famous story of how we started. Shauna and I were snowshoeing on New Year's Eve 2008, and we were just talking about what we were thinking about for our futures, and we were like, wouldn't it be great just to own our own company? All of a sudden, how about Vermont Brownie Company? And Catherine was like, yes, we're doing it. People love brownies. So just like that, these longtime friends became partners. Part of our success stems from the fact that Shauna and I are very different people. She's excited about the customer service part of things and also the public relations where I feel definitely more comfortable either in the kitchen or dealing with the books. But they both take the Vermont name very seriously. We think it's really important to use local ingredients. As a small business, we want to support other small businesses in our communities. Any ingredient that we can source from Vermont, we do. Our chev comes from the Barry area. Our butter is from Cabot. Our eggs from Colchester. And inspiration? Well, that comes from everywhere. One of the brownies that we'll probably do is an apple brownie starting probably next fall. I've never gotten so much attention eating an apple before. Want a bite? Local ingredients like that also inspire their best-selling brownie. Vermont Butter and Cheese Company puts out a Chevron cheese, and I started experimenting with how to incorporate that into our brownies. It's the brownie that everybody talks about. It's the one that everyone goes, wow, this is really good and different. But just because it's the ultimate local brownie doesn't mean it stays close to home. This is the order that's going to Iraq. We probably bake 1,000 brownies a week during our slower season. So probably 1,000 brownies a day when we're really busy. Shawna and Catherine think they're holding up traffic for a Food Network special. But will they say cheese when I show up? Idyllic Shelburne Farms in Vermont is the stage as Shawna and Catherine get psyched to defend their brownies. Watch out! They're so ready. Are you ready? We're ready. Cool. We'll take them. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, he's rolling up his sleeves. Wait a minute. Hey! While Miriam and Stephanie set up, I do a little brownie reconnaissance. Here's the secret book. This is the secret book right here. The baking binder. It's the holy grail. These guys have a very cool brownie, you know? It's got goat cheese running through it, which I love goat cheese. Very avant-garde goat cheese. He's busy chatting. We're busy baking. So we have our unsweetened chocolate that we're going to get going boiling because this takes a while to melt the chocolate and our butter. So while Shawna's doing that, I'm going to portion out the flour. The brownies are really rich. There's actually not a lot of flour in them. What I decided to do was kind of go back to my childhood a little bit. Peanut butter. The smooth kind. Not crunchy. So we're going to make a peanut butter caramel. We're going to layer it inside. So I heard him say something about peanut butter and caramel. Boring. I think he heard me. They're very aggressive here. I think we're good. I smell something burning on his side. Now that's how you make fast caramel. Just sugar and water until it gets very, very dark. We want it to be a really strong caramel. This is the hot and heavy cream that's going to be whisked into the caramel. We found that we had to make a caramel to hold the peanut butter in place so that it doesn't break inside the brownies. Should we get started on the chevre mixture as well? Sure. Someone has tried to sabotage us. Bobby, did you do this? We have a whisk for you guys if you want to... We have eggs, brown sugar, white sugar. I'm going to put a little vanilla, flour. I'm going to fold in some semi-sweet chocolate. Then we're going to marry the bittersweet and the unsweetened chocolate with the butter. That's going to be our brownie base. Once the batter is done, we're ready to start layering our brownies. I like your melon scooper. Who came up with the chevre and the brownie? I did. I just really like cream cheese brownies, so I just tried to create something a little different. Well, I'm looking forward to tasting them. Has anybody here ever tasted them? Are they good? I swirl the peanut butter and caramel mixture around in my brownie until finally my curiosity about their chevre gets the best of me. I needed a long... Do you like it? What do you think? It's very good. Yeah, good. We're going to put these in the oven, and then we'll feed some people some brownies. Anybody have any milk? This is something that I don't think Mr. Flay did on his brownies. We kind of did that. We folded in some semi-sweet chocolate at the very end. Okay, so what we do is we do the chunks right on top. So there's no searching. You just know. So these are beautiful and ready to go into the oven. Time to get cutting, then tasting. The final touch is some sea salt. It really pulls it all together. I think Bobby will be impressed with that. Would you like a brownie? Here you are. Thank you. Thank you very much. Lots of texture in these brownies. This has tons of promise. I like the saltiness to it. Very fudgy, very chocolatey. It's delicious. It's fantastic. I'm a huge fan of peanut butter and chocolate. They're delicious. I do like the chunks inside, I have to say. A little surprise. All right, let's feed these people. This is the Vermont Brownie Company's brownie. The saltiness, the tanginess, the chocolateness, it goes together so well. Bobby's was a little less. Wow. I hate to say it, but I really like Bobby's brownie. It's terrible. I never thought I would say that because Sean is incredible, but this brownie is really good. I really like Bobby's brownie because the texture of it, and I really like peanut butter in brownies, so I'm really glad that he did that. I think our chances are pretty good. Yeah. I feel pretty safe. And on uniqueness alone, I think we will win. Here to decide the outcome are New England Culinary Institute Executive Pastry Chef Adrian Westrop and Cookbook Writing Pastry Chef Gazina Bullock-Prado. Brownies will be judged on three criteria, texture, originality, and overall flavor. The winner of today's brownie throwdown is brownie A. I think you're going to be making brownies, a lot of them, for a very long time, so get ready. 800 number. Well, we felt win or lose, we accepted the challenge, and we were so glad that you were here, but we are so glad we won. I chose dish A today because it was beautifully chocolatey, nice and moist, and the layer of chevre really gave a nice contrast to the deep, dark chocolate. We got beat by the goat cheese brownie. Very original brownie. We gave it our best shot. Maybe next time. I thought we were going to lose for a little bit there. We were really sweating it out, but in the end, they picked us, and we did it, though. I know. So to all you awesome cooks out there, keep doing what you do, but ask yourself this. Are you ready for a throwdown?