effika

Who will win the honor of dinner tonight: my favorite fruit-filled salad, which I have just prepped a double batch of, or a can of refrigerator biscuits and some leftover pizza toppings?

I had to bend my whisk back into shape after this one.

Anyway: King Arthur Fudge Brownies Recipe. Yields a 9x13" pan.

TL;DR: Reducing the sugar and baking it longer makes for almost exactly the texture and taste I'd been hoping for! This is a brownie for chocolate lovers, but if you're only a chocolate liker you may want a less-intense recipe.

I really like hard brownie edges that have to be gnawed on. (My mom even got me a real Baker's Edge brownie/lasagna edge pan because I like edges so much!) I can consistently get this texture with box mixes and baking them a lot longer than they say to. Box brownie taste is Just OK so I've been on the hunt for a non-cakey/non-unbaked fudge texture recipe that gives me good (horrible) edges.

This is the third or fourth King Arthur brownie recipe I've tried. They have a lot of them. They're all good tasting, but not quite what I've been looking for.

So, first, I know that modifying a recipe and then reviewing it isn't exactly a good indication of what the recipe really is like. But. There are only so many categories of brownie. And I've made a lot of brownies from scratch these last 20 years and have figured out what I like and don't like and what works for me, so I'm listening to my kitchen instincts here.

Recipe Mods

1. I cut 100g off the sugar. This is because of all the reviews saying it's too sweet, and King Arthur's own blog post on reducing sugar in cookies wherein the tester discovered that 25% less sugar made the brownies better. Verditct? Reduce it by 100g if you prefer your chocolate dark & appreciate a nice black coffee. This is me, so it worked out. Reduce it by 50g if you don't want to be overwhelmed, and probably leave it alone if you want your dessert to be dessert.
2. I used what some blogger somewhere called "the brownie method" of melting sugar, fat, and chocolate together for a cake, because that's how you make brownies. Instead of following King Arthur's perfectly reasonable instructions, I melted my butter, dissolved the sugar, and then melted the chocolate chips (half Guittard 70% baking chocolate I needed to use and half Nestle dark chocolate chips), mixed in my Bensdorp dutch cocoa powder and coffee grounds, and let the pan cool before adding the eggs, vanilla, and flour/salt/baking powder. Verdict? I know this works so I'll probably keep doing it. I maybe didn't get the flaky thin crust on top because of it, but it also saves me a bunch of dishes.
3. I didn't have espresso powder so I put in two teaspoons of Pete's dark French roast coffee grounds. It was only supposed to be one but it smelled so good that I added another. Verdict? I'll probably do that again, maybe even add more for mocha brownies. 1 tsp is probably fine, though.
4. I baked it for 40 minutes instead of 30 minutes. Verdict? Check at 30 minutes as instructed in the recipe if your grandma didn't burn all the baked goods she ever made you and you imprinted on their carbonized taste/texture. If you like to gnaw on burnt edges, maybe go another 5 minutes more, even.

Texture Notes
It starts out a little cakey, as you can see (forgive the chipped china; it's of the same provenance as the whisk). Just a little bit. But bite into it and it condenses down into chewy fudge! The best of both worlds, truly.

The edges baked up nicely crisp, and a bit hard at 40 minutes. I need to take this pan to work for a snack day so I pulled it there, so that normal people can also enjoy them. When I do a pan for mostly me I'll let it go a little longer.

Taste Notes
I used good chocolate and it came through very nicely. This is a very chocolate-forward brownie, a dark-chocolate-lover's brownie. It is intense! I've had less-intense recipes and they're fine, but I prefer this flavor blast of chocolate.

It was well-balanced between sweet & bitter thanks to the reduced sugar and will definitely go well with ice cream thanks to that. I like things a bit bitter usually, so take that into consideration if you want to reduce the sugar. (Maybe just cut out 50g at first.)

The chocolate's flavor does the heavy lifting here. During 2020 I started adding cocoa powder straight to things^{I guess to feel something, anything at all} and I became a cocoa powder sommelier. Not too snobby of one: I still use Bensdorp for dutched and Penzey's for natural (it's so fruity!), but enough of one to want certain brands for certain things. Just get a little bit nicer chocolate chips and cocoa powder at the grocery store, and this recipe should easily beat boxed mixes. Nestle chocolate chips are delicious for this and if you can find a high-fat dutch cocoa at the store it'll be even better!