Dark Chocolate Brownies
Fudgy brownies built on melted dark chocolate and eggs whisked to a foam, which is what gives them their paper-thin crackled top.
- Prep
- 20 min
- Cook
- 30 min
- Total
- 50 min
- Serves
- 16
- Revisions
- 3
Allergens
- Cereals containing gluten
- Eggs
- Milk
- Soya
Named from the ingredients as written, including those carried in from sub-recipes. This is not a guarantee — check the labels on what you actually buy, and note that a product’s recipe can change.
Ingredients
Method
Heat the oven to 180C/350F.
Oil a 20cm square tin and line it with baking paper, leaving the paper standing proud on two sides as handles.
Melt the 200g of chopped chocolate with the butter in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water, stirring until it is smooth and glossy.
Lift the bowl off the pan and leave it for about 10 minutes, until the mixture is warm to the touch rather than hot. Chocolate still hot from the pan cooks the eggs into grainy threads the moment the two meet.
Whisk the eggs, caster sugar and vanilla together for 4-5 minutes, until the mixture is pale, thick and holds a ribbon on the surface for two or three seconds before it sinks back. This is the step people skip: the dissolved sugar rises during baking and sets as the paper-thin crackled top, and a batter that was only stirred together bakes out matte.
Pour the warm chocolate into the eggs in a slow stream, whisking as it goes.
Sift the flour, cocoa powder and fine salt over the batter.
Fold until the last dry streaks disappear, and no further.
Fold through the 100g of chocolate shards.
Scrape the batter into the tin.
Level the top with a spatula.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the top is set and dull with a papery sheen and the centre still wobbles faintly when you nudge the tin.
Push a skewer into the middle: it should come out with thick, damp crumbs stuck to it, and a skewer that comes out clean means they are already overbaked. This is the same underbake call as the brown butter cookies, except a hot tin holds its heat far longer than a tray, so the margin is narrower.
Scatter over the flaky salt while the surface is still hot.
Cool the brownies in the tin for at least 2 hours. They genuinely need the full time, because a warm brownie has not finished setting and the knife drags it into a smear.
Lift the slab out by the paper handles.
Cut into 16 squares, wiping the knife clean between cuts.
A square warmed through under the vanilla custard in this collection turns them from something eaten with coffee into a pudding.