I've been on a quest for years to find the perfect brownie recipe. My luck has been such that I've never used the same recipe twice. The consistency is too much like cake, or - if they're the right fudgy consistency - they're way too thin. OR, if they're not too thin nor too cakey, they're not nearly chocolatey enough. (Cue infomercial announcer voice) There's gotta be a better way!
Enter Alton Brown, host of Good Eats and all-around food smartypants. Good Eats was on the other night while I was trying to fall asleep, and it's was awfully difficult to drift off to dreamland while Alton's voice was coming in and out, telling me the secrets to amazing brownies. I did some googling this morning to find that the recipe featured on the show was indeed on Food Network's website, so I wrote it down, went to the kitchen, and now I'm going to share my success with you. Make them for Valentine's Day whether you've got a Special Someone with whom you'd like to sleep or you're going to spend the day alone, bitter, and looking to eat your feelings (I've been there, man).
Alton Brown's Cocoa Brownies (original recipe here)
4 large eggs
1 cup sugar, sifted
1 cup brown sugar, sifted
8 ounces melted butter
1-1/4 cups cocoa, sifted
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup flour, sifted
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (I used regular salt, and I used a full tsp of it. Go with it.)
Any time a recipe calls for melted butter, melting the butter is the first thing I do after I preheat the oven. The reason for this is that melted butter must also be cooled before it can be added to anything containing eggs. If the butter is too hot when you add it to the batter/dough/whatever, it will slightly cook the eggs. No one wants to bite into a brownie to find little bits of scrambled egg. Nasty. So, preheat the oven to 300 and start melting the butter. Cut it into chunks, put it in a microwave-safe cup, and nuke for 30 seconds at a time. Stir between each trip back into the microwave. If you find that it's all melted except for just a few pieces, don't bother putting it back in; just stir it for a minute and the last pieces will melt. This will also help ensure it won't be too hot when you add it in.
Hello, beautiful.
You may have noticed that every dry ingredient in the recipe has the word "sifted" after it. No sifter? No problem! I placed a strainer on top of my mixing bowl, poured the dry ingredients in, and shook the strainer like I was panning for gold.
White sugar!
I did the brown sugar next, but it was too moist to go through my sifter. I added it directly to the bowl and used a whisk (another poor man's sifter replacement) to combine it with the white sugar.
Cocoa!
Flour! Salt!
I took my whisk out again at this point and gave the bowl a final stir just to make sure everyone was getting along nicely.
Get the eggs into the bowl of your electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Beat the eggs on a medium speed until fluffy and light yellow.
This should take a minute or so; be careful not to overbeat the eggs or your whole life will suck forever and your house will burn down. Then, with the mixer on a low speed, gradually add in all the dry ingredients. Mix until just combined. I didn't take a picture of this because I was too busy making sure my eggs weren't overbeaten.
Then add that sweet, delicious, melted-and-cooled butter:
Again, keep the mixer on low speed while you do this. Now would be a good time to add the vanilla extract, too. As soon as you see everything is well combined, turn that mixer off. Overmixed brownie batter will ruin your life in so many more ways than overbeaten eggs ever could. Your dog will run away from home. You'll get shortchanged by a nickel at Dunkin Donuts. Your TiVo won't record the new episode of Jersey Shore because it's too full of Law & Order: SVU reruns, even though you've seen them all at least three times. Seriously -- BAD THINGS HAPPEN. Those unspeakably catastrophic horrors aside, overmixed batter gets too much air incorporated into it, resulting in brownies with air pockets, a too-tough texture, and an uneven, cakey consistency. If that happens to you, anonymously leave them in the break room at work and act like you don't know who put them there.
Most brownie recipes actually call for you to mix everything together with a spoon to avoid these horrors, but Alton trusts us with a mixer. You can do it!
Anyway, dump the delicious batter into a greased and floured 8" baking pan.
Bake for 45 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Turn over onto a cooling rack and cut while they're still hot, then allow them to cool on the rack.
Note: if the batter and brownies look exceptionally dark to you, it's because they are. I have an enthusiastic preference for dark chocolate, so I made these brownies with Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder -- feel free to use the regular stuff. The finished product was so dark my husband called them "blackies". But he also called them "delicious", and he was soooo right. They're moist, thick, chewy, extremely chocolatey, and so rich they buy a new Aston Martin every time their current one runs out of gas.
In summation, my quest for a good brownie recipe has ended by finding a GREAT brownie recipe. Make it today for yourself. Make it on Valentine's Day for your sweetie. I don't care why you make them, just make them! And soon! You'll thank me, I promise.
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