Master Brownies

So brownies are really, really simple as baked things go. What bothers me is that I can't find anywhere a sort of "master recipe" for brownies--just various individual recipes. By investigating some of these and doing some testing I've come up with a flexible brownie framework (never typed that phrase before) for making brownies on the fly, to your individual taste.

The really important ratio is 2 parts sugar:1 part cocoa:1 part fat:1 "egg-like"

Two eggs is roughly half a cup, for reference to the dry ingredients. So a brownie recipe might call for 1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup cocoa, 1/2 cup of oil or butter and 2 eggs (or 2 flax eggs, or the equivalent for your favorite egg substitute).

Chemical leaveners

Unlike in cakes, chemical leaveners are totally optional. If you like cakier brownies, you should add around 1/2 tsp per cup of sugar (and up to 1 tsp if you like even cakier brownies). If you're a fudge brownie fan, you shouldn't bother unless you're using a non-leavening egg substitute (like a flax egg), in which case you should add around 1/2 tsp per cup of sugar.

To Dutch or not to Dutch?

I was going to make a pun about that, because I misremembered and thought Hamlet was from the Netherlands, but anyway...

Dutch process cocoa gives an earthier flavor to brownies which many people prefer to the flavor of "natural" cocoa. Note that if you're using an actual brownie recipe, you can usually substitute one for the other, unless the recipe calls for any amount of baking soda. This is because dutch process cocoa is alkalized so that it has a neutral pH. Natural cocoa is acidic (pH ~= 5), so it's used to help activate baking soda in some recipes. If you really want the dutched-process flavor you can replace any baking soda in the recipe with 2-3 times the amount of baking powder, and it should work fine.

Melted chocolate?

If you like your brownies extra chewy and fudgey, it sometimes helps to add melted chocolate instead of cocoa powder. You'll just need to reduce the oil to make up for the cocoa solids found in baking chocolate. You also might want to reduce the sugar, if the chocolate has added sugar in it. The nutrition label is very helpful for this:

Here is a random photo of the nutritional label for a bar of baking chocolate:

This chocolate bar has 22g of fat and 0g of sugar per 42g. So we can assume that 20g of this is cocoa solids. One cup of cocoa powder is around 118g, so if we're supposed to use half a cup we need 59g. That means around 1.5 servings, or 4.5 sections, of chocolate.

Now we have to reduce the fat. From our 1.5 servings we have 22g*1.5=33g of fat. According to my nutrition label, vegetable oil is 100% fat, and weighs in at around 4.5g per teaspoon. 33/4.5 = 7.3, so we have 7.3 tsp = 2.5 tbs of fat. Subtract that from 1/2 a cup, and we only need 5.5 tbs of oil.

Butter vs Shortening or oil

Butter brings a more--well, buttery--flavor to your brownies. However, it tends to make them denser/less cakey. If you like fudgey brownies (I salute you!) then you can use oil or butter and it should come out okay. If you need them extra cakey, use shortening. (I haven't tested any of this, but there's a great article on it at The Kitchn)

Another thing to keep in mind is that while shortening and oil are 100% fat, butter is only 80% fat--so you might need a little more butter, and in shortening or oil recipes you might need a little more water.

Baking time

I'm going to make another post on baking time calculations soon, but in the meantime, I have some general guidelines. Usually brownies should bake at around 350F (around 175C). A recipe with 2 cups of sugar will take around 40 minutes in the oven. It's done when the knife comes out clean.

If using a smaller recipe, a flatter pan, or making brownie muffins/cupcakes, you should reduce the baking time and check on them more often. Especially for the cupcakes. See the square-cube law.