rayrayisHAPPY
GalleryOriginalsrayraytoonsStoriesMerchAboutContact
Commissions
Recipe

Fudge Brownies

LFGGGGGGG

Brownies in a parchment-lined dish with a small flag stuck in them, sitting behind a steak. That is the correct hierarchy for a holiday.

These are fudge brownies, not cake brownies, and the difference is one decision: almost no flour and no leavening. What you get is dense, dark and slightly underbaked in the middle, which is the point. A brownie that passes the clean-skewer test is a chocolate cake and it should be called one.

The crackled papery top everybody wants comes from dissolving the sugar into hot butter and then beating the eggs in hard. That is it. It is not the chocolate and it is not luck.

Makes
16 brownies
Hands-on
20 minutes
Bake
30 minutes
Done when
The skewer is NOT clean

An hour to make and bake and at least two to cool before they will cut cleanly.

Steak and smashed potato with a flag in the brownies
Shot the night it was made. Open the picture for the full photograph.

What you need

The brownies

  • 2 sticks butter
  • 1 1/2 cups sugar
  • 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1 cup cocoa powder
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 4 eggs, at room temperature
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 3/4 cup flour — that is all
  • 6 oz dark chocolate, chopped into chunks

And

  • A 9-inch square dish, lined with parchment with an overhang
  • Flaky salt, for the top

How it goes

  1. 1 — Line the dish with parchment and leave an overhang

    Two strips crossing, hanging over the sides. The whole slab lifts out in one piece and you cut it on a board rather than hacking at it in the dish.

  2. 2 — Melt the butter and dissolve the sugar INTO it, hot

    Butter melted and heated until it is properly hot, then both sugars and the cocoa and salt whisked in off the heat. This is the step that makes the crackly top — the sugar has to dissolve, not just mix.

  3. 3 — Cool it until you can hold your hand against the bowl

    Eggs into a hot mixture scramble. Three or four minutes is enough.

  4. 4 — Beat the eggs in hard, one at a time

    A full minute of real beating per egg. You are whipping air into dissolved sugar, and that thin layer of sugar foam is what bakes into the papery crust.

  5. 5 — Flour folded in until it just disappears

    Three quarters of a cup across four eggs is almost nothing, which is why these are fudgy. Fold, do not beat — any gluten developed now makes them cakey.

  6. 6 — Chocolate chunks last, then into the dish

    Folded through so there are molten pockets through the finished slab. Spread level and knock the dish on the counter twice to settle it.

  7. 7 — 350°F for 28 to 32 minutes

    The edges should be set and pulling away and the middle should still look slightly soft. A skewer must come out with wet crumbs on it. A clean skewer means you have overbaked them.

    pro tip — Pull them at the point where you are nervous. They carry on setting in the hot dish for another ten minutes.

  8. 8 — Flaky salt on the hot top, then cool two hours

    Salt while the surface is tacky. Then completely cool, lifted out by the parchment, cut into sixteen with a hot wet knife wiped between cuts.

LFGGGGGGG. Flag optional. LFG.

More of what comes out of this kitchen on the food wall.

Every picture on this page is one of mine. I paint for a living the rest of the time — that is the gallery, and the originals are for sale.