I love brownies. I am not ashamed. Brownies are that dessert that you’ve loved since you were a child, and though there are more refined desserts out there, you will always hold a child-like love for the simple, chocolatey, gooey goodness of a brownie.
I’ve already talked about my controversial position on homemade brownies when I made the Raspberry Cheesecake Brownie Bars. To sum up, I don’t necessarily feel that homemade brownies are superior enough to boxed brownies to warrant the extra work involved. That doesn’t mean I’m not willing to be proven wrong, nor does it mean I’m above doing the legwork to find that recipe.
What I didn’t tell you while making the last recipe was the crazy search I’d gone on to find dutch-process cocoa. That search resulted in failure, so I ended up using regular Hershey’s cocoa, an ingredient I’d used pretty much all my life. Sadly, substituting regular cocoa for dutch-process cocoa is not going to yield satisfactory results. I will not bore you with the details, but the dutch process changes the acidity of the cocoa, which makes it react differently in a recipe. Since baking is basically chemistry, it’s important not to use them interchangeably.
I took to the internet to order some dutch-process cocoa for the next time I ran into this in a recipe. King Arthur Flour is pretty much my go-to for ingredients like this. No, they don’t pay me to advertise. I just like it. After a long back and forth, I decided to order their Double Dutch Dark Cocoa, which is a blend of dutch process and black cocoa. I also ordered some of their espresso powder, because I like to use it in my chocolate recipes. I ordered, they came, and they sat in my pantry for a few weeks until I finally decided I needed to do something with them. Enter King Arthur’s Fudge Brownie recipe. I figured if I was going to use their cocoa, their flour, and their espresso powder, I might as well just use their recipe. Change my mind, brownie recipe, change my mind!
There are so many ingredients in brownie recipes. It’s so much to measure. That being said, it gets tons easier if you weigh everything out. Kudos to the King Arthur site for giving me the option to choose how to measure the ingredients. I’ll include both volume and weight in the recipe below.
The first thing you should do is start your butter melting over low heat. In a mixing bowl, you start with four eggs, and beat in cocoa, espresso powder, baking powder, salt and vanilla. When the butter melts, you stir in the sugar and heat it to the point where it’s hot, but not bubbling and the sugar starts to dissolve. It won’t dissolve completely, but it does start to lighten in color, and you’ll notice that it doesn’t separate anymore. This step apparently helps to create that signature flaky top crust of the brownie. Note the difference in the two pictures below.
That gets mixed (still hot) into the egg/cocoa mixture, and it produces this very lovely, dark batter to which you add the flour and chocolate chips. That color alone made me really happy that I bought special cocoa.
I poured the batter into a greased 13×9 baking pan, lined with parchment with overlap up the sides so it would be easy to pull out and cut. I’ve become particularly persnickety as of late, so I wanted to cut my brownies into cute little squares for both the photos and to take into a late night rehearsal we were having at work. Performers are a lot more likely to eat something fattening if it’s cut into tiny pieces, and I needed these to disappear before I personally ate them all.
When I take the brownies out of the pan, I cut off the edges (and eat them) and use a ruler to measure. Then I score the tops before cutting all the way into them with my very sharp chef’s knife. I love those perfect edges!!
Don’t get me wrong, here. These brownies were very, very good. With the addition of that dark chocolate cocoa, I will say I definitely liked these brownies much better than any other recipe I’ve tried. The question still remains as to whether or not a quality box of brownies would be good enough to justify not putting in the extra effort. Would anyone really know the difference? I’m tempted to make boxed brownies this week, lie to my co-workers, and see if they praise the boxed mix as much as they did the homemade ones! I’m still on the hunt for the one recipe to rule them all!
Double Dutch Dark Chocolate Brownies
A solid brownie recipe using King Arthur's Double Dutch Dark Cocoa. Recipe from King Arthur Flour (called Fudge Brownies)
Ingredients
- 4 Large Eggs
- 1 1/4 cup (106g) Double-Dutch Dark Cocoa
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Baking Powder
- 1 tsp Espresso Powder
- 1 Tbsp Vanilla Extract
- 1 cup (2 sticks) Unsalted Butter
- 2 1/4 cups (447g) Sugar
- 1 1/2 cups (177g) All-Purpose Flour
- 2 cups (One 8 oz bag) Chocolate Chips
Directions
- Step 1 Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease a 9×13 baking pan (adding parchment liner if desired)
- Step 2 Beat eggs into a bowl and beat at medium speed with the cocoa, salt, baking powder, espresso powder, and vanilla until smooth
- Step 3 Melt butter over low heat. Add sugar, stirring until mixture is hot, but not bubbling until some of the sugar dissolves and the butter is no longer separating
- Step 4 Add hot butter/sugar mixture to the egg/cocoa, stirring until smooth
- Step 5 Add flour and chocolate chips, stirring until smooth
- Step 6 Spoon batter into the prepared baking pan and bake for 30 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. The brownies should be set around the edges, and the center should look moist, but not uncooked. Cool before serving
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