Ingredient

Brownies

A brownie sits between a cake and a confection, and where exactly it sits is decided by three numbers: fat against flour, sugar against everything, and how long it stays in the oven. Almost every disappointing brownie has simply been baked too long.

Fudgy against cakey

A fudgy brownie is high in fat and sugar and low in flour, with little or no raising agent. There is not enough flour to build a crumb, so it sets into something dense and slightly molten.

A cakey brownie has more flour, more egg, and usually baking powder. It rises, holds an open crumb and eats like a chocolate cake in a square.

Neither is wrong, but recipes rarely say which they are aiming for. If you want fudgy, look for a recipe with more butter and chocolate than flour by weight and no raising agent. If you want cakey, the reverse.

The shiny paper-thin crust

The crust everyone wants comes from sugar dissolved into the egg, which sets to a meringue-like film on the surface.

• Use melted chocolate and butter rather than cocoa alone — the fat helps carry the sugar into solution.
• Whisk the eggs and sugar together properly, until pale and thickened, before the chocolate goes in. This is the step most recipes underplay and it is the one that produces the crust.
• Do not over-fold after the flour goes in. Extra working knocks out the dissolved sugar structure.
• Bake at a moderate heat. Too cool and the film never forms; too hot and it browns into something else.

The method

1. Melt the butter and chocolate together gently and let it cool slightly. Hot chocolate poured onto eggs will start to cook them.
2. Whisk the eggs and sugar until noticeably thick and pale — several minutes, not thirty seconds.
3. Fold the chocolate mixture in, then the sifted flour, cocoa and salt, stopping as soon as the streaks vanish.
4. Scrape into a lined tin and level the top. A square tin gives more of the good chewy edges than a round one.
5. Bake until the edges are set and lifted slightly and the middle still has a definite wobble. It will look underdone. It is not.
6. Cool completely in the tin. A warm brownie cannot be cut and has not finished setting.
7. Chill before cutting for clean edges, and use a hot dry knife.

Common adjustments

Too cakey for you

Cut the flour, drop any baking powder, add an extra egg yolk in place of a whole egg.

Too greasy

Too much butter for the chocolate, or the mixture split. Whisk it back together before the flour goes in.

Not chocolatey enough

Add cocoa powder as well as chocolate, plus a good pinch of salt and a little instant coffee — neither tastes of itself, both deepen the chocolate.

Dry and crumbly

Overbaked, near-certainly. Take five minutes off and trust the wobble.

Sunk in the middle

Almost always fine in a brownie. A dense mixture settles and that is where the fudgiest part is.

Common questions