Fudgy brownies: dense, moist, chocolatey, with a crackly top
One-bowl brownies made with real chocolate, not cocoa alone: dark chocolate melted with butter, sugar, eggs, a little flour. The secret of a moist centre is a short bake and a skewer with moist crumbs; the secret of the crackly top is sugar well beaten into the warm chocolate. Cut only once completely cold.
Your own work in that: 20 min.
- Batter 20 min
- Baking 25 min
- Cooling 60 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneMelt the chocolate with the butter
Heat the oven to 175 °C and line the tin with paper overhanging the sides. Break up the chocolate and melt it with the cubed butter in a bowl over a pot of barely simmering water (the bowl not touching the water), stirring until smooth and glossy. Take off and cool 5 minutes.
Ingredients: 200 g dark chocolate · 200 g butter · 200 g sugar · 3 pcs eggs · 100 g plain flour · 2 tbsp cocoa powder · 1 pinch salt · 1 tbsp vanilla sugar · 60 g walnuts
TipBowl over steam, not in the water, and low heat. Overheated chocolate turns grainy and dull, and then there is no saving it.
Over steam, until smooth and glossyBeat in the sugar and eggs
Add the sugar and vanilla sugar to the warm (not hot) chocolate and whisk a minute, until the sugar begins to dissolve. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking vigorously after each, until the mixture is thick, smooth and shiny like icing.
TipThis is where the thin, papery crackly top is made: sugar dissolved in warm fat with the eggs rises to the surface in the oven and sets. Don't cut the whisking short.
Thick and shiny like icingAdd the flour and cocoa
Sift the flour, cocoa and salt over the mixture and fold with a spatula only until combined, 20–30 strokes. Long mixing develops gluten and the brownies turn rubbery instead of fudgy. Fold in half the walnuts.
Briefly, until the flour disappearsInto the tin
Spread the batter in the tin, level it, scatter the rest of the walnuts on top. The layer is about 2.5 cm: the small 20 × 20 tin is no accident; in a bigger one the brownies come out flat and dry.
Levelled, walnuts on topBake briefly
175 °C, conventional, middle shelf, 22–25 minutes. The top should be set and crackled, and a skewer pushed into the centre should come out with moist crumbs, neither wet batter nor clean. A clean skewer means overbaked brownies.
TipBetter 2 minutes too early than too late: brownies keep cooking in the tin for a quarter of an hour after they come out.
A skewer with moist crumbsCool completely, then cut
Cool in the tin 60 minutes, until fully cold, ideally another hour in the fridge. Warm brownies fall apart under the knife; cold ones cut into neat, dense squares. Lift out by the paper, cut with a long knife into 16 squares, wiping the blade after each cut.
Cold, by the paper, blade wiped
Before you start
With sea salt
A pinch of salt flakes on top just before baking: the contrast that sharpens the chocolate. The café version.
With peanut butter
Teaspoons of peanut butter pressed into the batter in the tin and dragged through with a knife: a marble.
Dry and cakey
Baked too long, or too much flour. Weigh the flour rather than spooning it, and take them out while the skewer is still dirty.
