I’ve tried lots of brownie recipes: Boxes, scratch, frosted, plain, nuts, chips, fudge … Each of them has something to like, but depending on my mood I might want a change of pace.
Not any more. My wife found this recipe, and it’s perfect. I’m done looking. This is the brownie recipe that I’ll use from now on.
Ingredients
1-1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder (see note below)
3 eggs
3/4 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (see note below)
Directions
A NOTE ON CHOCOLATE: You’ll notice the list of ingredients is very short. That means the quality of the chocolate makes a huge difference. The chocolate flavor is front-and-center — not the sugar, not the richness, the chocolate. I used Ghirardelli unsweetened cocoa powder, and Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips.
The assembly is about as easy as you can get. Combine the sugar, flour, cocoa, eggs and melted butter and mix.
Do this by hand, until the dry ingredients are just incorporated into the wet, and stop. You don’t need to beat it, and in fact want to avoid producing gluten from the flour. (Kneading flour produces gluten, the springy protein that makes bread chewy.)
Stir in the chocolate chips.
Line a 9×13 baking dish with parchment. I over-did it a little bit here, because I wanted to be absolutely sure it didn’t stick. As long as you cover the bottom you should be good, as it will pull away from the edges while baking.
Pour the batter and spread it out. Don’t try to spread it like mayo on bread, or you’ll move the parchment around. Poke at it with the tip of a rubber spatula.
Bake at 325° for 20-30 minutes. It’s done when a toothpick inserted in the tallest part comes out clean. Keep in mind you’ve got chips in there. If you hit one with the toothpick it will have melted chocolate on it. You might need to poke a couple of spots to make sure you aren’t hitting a chip.
Very carefully lift the parchment out of the baking dish. Get a spare set of hands if you can.
Peel the edges and let cool for a few minutes before slicing.
Pour yourself a glass of milk, and that’s it.
Quick question while you’re here:
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156 Comments
Hi Drew! I just made these brownies today, but they came out looking a bit flat. They’re only about 3/4 inch high and the top doesn’t look like yours in the picture (I got a 9 x 13 inch pan though). Mine are dark brown on the top, not light brown. And its very hard to see the chocolate chips. Is it because I used Hershey’s unsweetened cocoa powder and Hershey’s semi-sweet chocolate chips? Or is it because I didn’t put in any salt (I used unsalted butter)? The taste isn’t bad though.
Emily, mine weren’t more than an inch high either, so I think yours were probably about the same. These are closer to fudge than to cake.
As for the taste, if you used unsalted butter and didn’t add any salt, the taste would be a little bland. And like I said, there’s not much else in these, so the quality of the chocolate is going to make a big difference.
I’ve seen taste tests where they make the same recipe with different brands of chocolate and the results are never even close. There might be some personal preferences among the various premium brands, but the “mainstream” brands — Hershey and Nestle — are never even close.
I’d really love to hear what you think if you do these again with different chocolate.
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