You do not need ten brownie recipes. You need one excellent recipe that works every time and delivers enough chocolate to make the whole thing worthwhile.
If I am making a proper chocolate dessert, I want it to be genuinely worth the calories. That means a brownie with a dense and fudgy centre and a deep chocolate flavour that does not disappear behind too much sugar.
These are those brownies.
Browning the butter is the one extra step, and it earns its place. It turns nutty, almost like toasted hazelnuts, and takes the dark chocolate somewhere deeper. There are only 65 grams of flour in the whole pan, and that is what keeps these firmly on the fudge side of the line.
Fudgy Brown Butter Brownies
Makes 12 to 16 brownies
INGREDIENTS:
170 g unsalted butter
180 g dark chocolate, 65 to 70%, finely chopped
180 g granulated sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
4 g fine salt
5 ml (1 tsp) vanilla extract
65 g all-purpose flour
50 g dark chocolate, chopped
METHOD
Heat the oven to 170°C. Line the base and sides of a 20 cm square metal baking pan with baking paper, leaving enough overhang on two opposite sides to lift the brownies out later.
Place the butter in a light-coloured saucepan over medium heat and let it melt completely. It will foam, then quiet down. Swirl the pan occasionally and watch the bottom closely. After a few minutes the milk solids will turn deep golden and the butter will smell nutty, almost like toasted hazelnuts. Remove the pan from the heat as soon as you see the golden specks.
Immediately pour the hot brown butter, scraping in all the browned bits, over the finely chopped dark chocolate, in a heatproof bowl. Let it sit for 30 seconds, then stir slowly until smooth and glossy. Keep it warm while you prepare the eggs. It should feel noticeably warm, not just room temperature.
In a separate bowl, combine the sugar and eggs. Whisk vigorously for 3–4 minutes with an electric mixer, until the mixture is pale and glossy and the sugar no longer feels gritty. Stir in the vanilla.
Slowly pour the warm chocolate mixture into the eggs while whisking continuously. Once it’s all in, keep whisking hard for about 1 minute, until the batter is thick, dark and very shiny.
Add the flour and salt and fold gently. Stop as soon as the dry ingredients disappear. Fold in the chopped chocolate.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and spread it evenly, smoothing the surface lightly.
Lift the pan 2–3 cm above the counter and give it one or two gentle taps to release any large air bubbles.
Bake immediately in the center of the oven for 22–25 minutes, until the edges are set and the center still looks slightly soft. A toothpick inserted into the middle should come out with moist crumbs.
Let the brownies cool completely in the pan for 1–2 hours before lifting them out and cutting. For clean edges, cut with a hot knife, wiping it between cuts.
