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I Baked 144 Brownies To Create The Perfect Recipe

Join Chris Morocco in the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen as he takes you through the journey of creating his perfect chocolate brownie recipe.

See Chris's full final recipe here: https://weightloss-tricks.today/recipe/triple-chocolate-brownies%3C/a%3E%3C/div%3E%3Cp data-testid="AboutDate" class="BaseWrap-sc-gzmcOU BaseText-eqOrNE AboutDate-inSEXx deqABF bXTGwe kvmUSw">Released on 04/06/2023

Transcript

I spent the last two days making all of these brownies

to find the perfect one.

This took one and a half pounds of chocolate chips,

a pound of cocoa powder, five pounds of chocolate,

$30 worth of vanilla extract, nine batches of brownies,

for a total of 144 brownies.

I wanna show you how I developed my perfect brownie recipe.

My perfect brownie it's three things.

I've been giving this a lot of thought,

probably too much thought.

A crackly, smooth kind of glossy top,

a texture that is fudgy,

but by fudgy I think we mean chewy.

Really deep, really rich flavor.

So game plan.

V1 we're going for more savory.

I think you just have to start somewhere.

Informed by some of the recipes that I've seen

and that I've cooked myself and that I know work.

Mark Bittman's brownies for The New York Times.

Ultimate chewy brownies.

King Arthur flour.

Katherine Hepburn's Brownies.

This is on Epicurious via Ruth Reichl and Gourmet.

It's a tangled web.

Just wanna get my dry ingredients set.

So I'm using a half cup of flour, a teaspoon of salt,

Dutch-process cocoa powder.

It has deeper, richer chocolate flavor.

One stick of butter, browned.

If there's an opportunity

to introduce a little bit extra flavor,

brown sugar instead of white sugar,

a little bit of whole wheat flour in addition to AP,

or just white flour, I go for it.

Browning butter drives out the water content from the butter

and when you toast those milk solids

you develop all those wonderful nutty flavors and aromas.

It's gonna be actively savory.

The question is, are people gonna be willing to do it?

I wanna use both cocoa powder and melted chocolate.

Bar chocolate is adding fat here.

It's also adding body to these brownies.

The question is how do you get that mixture to form,

like, just ever so slight of a crumb?

Using too much melted chocolate you're gonna have,

like, an outrageously chocolate brownie,

but, like, at what point is it

almost not even a brownie anymore?

Okay, so that's a hundred grams of granulated sugar.

Do we do the light brown,

or do we really go for it with the dark brown?

Dark brown sugar would just have,

like, a higher proportion of molasses content here

and flavor-wise maybe a click past where we wanna be.

Maybe we'll go light brown.

What dissolves sugar?

Water, but remember

we drove all of the water content out of brown butter

and the chocolate doesn't really have

any appreciable water content.

Yeah, I'm not really noticing

that the sugar is melting appreciably here.

One of the things that I'm trying to go for here

is a crackly top.

It's really the kind of melting of the sugar

interacting with the eggs,

which are kind of forming a minimal layer of meringue

on top of the brownies

that's kind of forming and rising as they bake.

I hate when the measuring spoons still have the ring.

Just, like, separate them.

Why do you want them all attached?

So I'm doing two teaspoons of vanilla.

All right, definitely noticing a texture change now.

This is like a very tight cake batter.

Dry ingredients I'll stir them in

just so I don't overwork this mixture.

It's a very thick mixture.

Releases almost semi-clean from the bowl.

Definitely with the addition of the eggs

I noticed a big difference,

and I do wanna spread this out.

It is reading a little tight to me,

but we'll see how it bakes up.

The proof is certainly in the brownie as they say.

Another assumption I'm making is that,

like, let's start this first attempt at 35,

which is pretty standard,

but knowing that some brownie recipes

do occasionally call for a baking temperature

as much as 400,

which I think is a way of kind of getting,

like, a crispier edge coupled with, like, a gooier center,

but let's see.

One thing a brownie should not be is underbaked.

I'm not, like, the neatest baker.

That's why, like, I find it honestly, like, baking at home

not the most relaxing.

Just, like, anticipating the cleanup

everybody wants to help.

It's, like, the tiniest bit of, like, moist crumb attached.

I think we're good there.

The top feels, like, pretty nice and set.

There are some good things happening here

in terms of having, like, a little bit of a crackly top.

Is it good?

Is it bad?

I don't know.

A hot brownie by default is almost always delicious.

So I think we need to throw this in the fridge

before we can even talk about it.

It's only when things set to room temp

that you can really see,

oh, is this truly crispy, jammy, chewy,

all of the things.

I wanna see from the side how does that look?

There's a little bit of structure here

and it kind of devolves into this layer of sort of like

indeterminate fudge.

I'm kind of looking at how you have a little bit more

of this height and structure around the edge.

This brownie is too intense, it's too chocolatey,

and just lacking a certain amount of, like, structure

and/or even water.

Just give me a little bit of, like, more height,

a little bit more kind of openness.

I'm worried about texture and flavor,

the two things I think are real deficits here.

Are the decisions we made

in terms of the interventions around the butter,

the light brown sugar,

did that really make a difference?

I don't know.

Like are you reading the brown butter

against the backdrop of six ounces of bittersweet chocolate

and a half cup of Dutch-process cocoa powder?

Maybe not.

V2 inspired to an extent by the simplicity

of Ruth Reichl and the Mark Bittman.

What happens when you incorporate

a higher proportion of melted chocolate versus cocoa?

Bittman's got half a cup of AP flour.

Ruth Reichl has a quarter cup of AP flour.

What if we did a quarter cup of cocoa

and a quarter cup of flour?

Bittman's got three ounces of unsweetened.

This bar is four ounces,

so wouldn't it be nice

to just use the four ounces of unsweetened.

One stick butter but we're not gonna brown it.

I'm just melting the chocolate and the butter together.

This is decidedly simpler

than having to brown the butter in a separate pan.

One and a quarter cup sugar.

No brown sugar in this version.

Different proportions of the same ingredients

will have different outcomes.

The number of people who are like,

oh but, like, you just, like, took the same ingredients

that so and so used

and then just, like, did different quantities.

I was like, yeah, wow, thank you for paying attention.

All right, this is version two.

Didn't have the crackly top,

which I'm not entirely surprised by.

I'm honestly surprised

that we did get such a pronounced crackly top with V1.

It also feels overly dark and overly savory.

The texture is maybe a slight improvement versus V1,

but it's still reading pretty brooding,

pretty dark and kind of heavy.

Would brown butter even if I had used it

show up against that level of intensity

coming from the chocolate flavor?

Probably not.

My instinct is to frankly add more flour and add an egg

to just kind of keep that chocolateyness,

but just kind of stretch it out

over something a little bit lighter and taller

and bring a little bit more kind of cakeyness

kind of back into it.

What would that do?

That's what I think is so interesting, right?

It's like it can be a brownie and it can fit the brief,

check all the boxes and still feel wrong.

You didn't necessarily create something exceptional.

It works but is it great?

Not at all.

What I'm thinking is maybe we work this from both sides.

We take what we like about V1

and we try to continue to refine it.

So pull back some of the chocolate,

pull back some of the cocoa.

See if maybe just going to all granulated sugar

will give us a little bit more

of that kind of crispiness around the edge.

Brown sugar, right?

It is good at making things moist and chewy,

but I wonder if in the case of a brownie

really it's the granulated that's doing the heavy lifting

in terms of giving you that kind of crispiness.

So point being what if we refine V1?

Okay, do another pass at that called 1A.

I know.

See what I did there?

This just helps me see side by side where we're at.

I'm gonna go down to one third cup AP.

We're gonna go down to one third Dutch cocoa,

and let's stay consistent at one T salt.

I wanna go to four ounce bittersweet, two eggs.

I'm actually gonna go up in sugar.

I'm gonna go to one and a quarter cup granulated sugar.

You wanna be careful

when you introduce sugar and eggs together

because the sugar will start to cook the egg.

It's one of those things, like, my culinary instructors

were always like you have to start whisking it will cook it.

It's like will it?

It'll just, like, it'll kind of singe it

and I think it can cause the egg to separate.

I'm starting by whisking the eggs and sugar

until they're foamy and starting to form ribbons.

See if we can get a little melty melty.

A brownie needs to have a crackly top.

Liquefying the sugar to an extent is important,

but is it important enough to ask people

to build the batter on the stove top?

Maybe.

Already for some folks

putting a bowl over a simmering pot of water is like

10 times harder than opening up a box of mix.

So I just wanna be mindful of that.

Then I'm gonna incorporate the brown butter

and chocolate mixture.

This is where it gets wild

'cause we're also gonna go up to 375.

Baking at 375 I'm hoping gets us a little bit more of a set

and kind of crispy edge,

while still maintaining a fudgy center.

Higher temperature, higher proportion of granulated sugar,

better crispiness, we'll see.

Neither version one nor version two

is feeling nearly close enough to me right now.

I've got 1A in the oven,

see how that's looking before I make any next moves.

Version one, this is where I kind of pulled out some stops

in terms of dialing up flavors and ingredients.

Very dense but also a little dry.

[Chris] Version two.

[Hana] Yeah, definitely more of a terrain.

[Chris] It's definite absence of crackliness.

Texture is better,

but the chocolate flavor is not as, like, nuanced.

You did use unsweetened here so that might be a contributor.

This I'm calling 1A, it's closer to one.

I did a little blanchir of the eggs and sugar.

Ooh, okay.

That's the word, you know.

I didn't wanna say it before.

It kind of helped that almost merengue-y situation.

[Chris] I wouldn't mind

if there was a little bit more height to these.

Adding another egg might help.

Plus a click more dry ingredient, flour, cocoa powder.

Can I throw in a curveball?

[Chris] Yeah.

Have you considered chocolate chips?

You can, you can.

Part of the reason is, like, I hate them

and I don't want them in a brownie,

but I think it can help having that, like, liquid sugar

coming riding along with the chocolate pieces

it has shown to improve that kind of crackly top.

Oh.

I was looking before we spoke to kind of build

a little bit more on V2,

but you've made me see some of the benefits

of where we came in with, like, V1.

And I think maybe we can continue to refine off of V1A.

I would add chips and maybe,

like, a touch of instant espresso.

I'm not browning butter, sorry.

I know.

I do worry that the brown butter presents a rubicon

that many people will not cross.

Overall the reception to 1A was pretty favorable.

A lot of questions for tomorrow.

Can we get away with doing this in one bowl?

Is 375 really the right temp?

I also wanna try taking out the brown butter.

I think we probably have four or five more rounds tomorrow.

[Chris] How you feeling?

I feel okay this morning.

The walls are closing in a little bit

just in terms of not having as much time as I would like.

This is the version I'm working with first up today

based on what I learned from version 1A.

Key things to note are no longer using brown butter.

What if we try to bring the sugar and eggs to this bowl

and, like, kind of warm them up slightly as we whisk them

and see if we can get the sugar to dissolve

a little bit that way without making it hot per se.

Is that a good idea or is that a bad idea?

I don't actually know.

I'm adding an egg, so three eggs total.

Look at what a difference it made to add that third egg.

Like this is so much more fluid of a batter.

We upped the AP flour and cocoa powder

to help offset that increased liquidity from the egg,

but also in the interest of creating

a little bit more structure to the brownie,

and then the X factor,

chocolate chips.

I was entirely against chocolate chips for a while.

I may still be against chocolate chips.

Let me make that very clear,

but if they serve a purpose,

who am I to deny the impact

that they could have on this recipe, right?

Just because I don't necessarily want them in my brownie

doesn't mean they shouldn't be there.

I mean, wow, what a difference

in terms of how much we're filling this thing.

I'm really liking the height.

It presents as more of a significant brownie.

Pretty nice separation of this,

like, lovely crackly slightly meringue-like top

with this fudgy lower quadrant.

This is a brownie you can eat several bites of.

The chocolate chips aren't bumming me out in any way.

I think they help reinforce that sensation of fudgyness.

One thing that I think is really working here

is the balance of flavor.

We've got a lovely, sweet, fruity, cocoa-y,

intensely chocolatey balance.

It, like, really invites another bite when you taste it.

Here's my taste.

[soft music]

It is a little bit more chewy, which I appreciate.

The thing that I'm missing is, like, a little bit more salt

and I'd be curious, like,

what does this version taste like with the brown butter?

Honestly, you're close.

90 to 95% of the development work,

the heavy lifting is behind us.

The two bigger criteria that we wanna gauge are

bringing brown butter back

and then also a version with high heat going up to 400.

We're running a little bit outta time here

so Danielle's gonna cook through the brown butter version

and I'll do the bake at 400,

High heat I'm wondering

if it's gonna channel even more heat through the metal pan

and get us even more of a crispy edge

contrasted with more of a rich and fudgy interior.

Brown butter, the question is,

is it gonna make a really big impact on flavor

and could our structure be compromised in any way

by driving off all of the water content.

We're gonna treat our previous batch that we tasted

as our control group.

Will either of these things prove to be decisive

and worth making arguments for?

I don't know, but that's why we're gonna do it.

I couldn't have come at a better time.

I'm in need of a little bit of sugar.

It's like that time of day for sure.

Baking at 400 as opposed to 375.

The chocolate chips are a real revelation I gotta say.

The texture is beautiful.

You know what?

This one looks the prettiest but it's actually a little dry.

I think it's the high heat

pulled a little too much moisture, yeah.

So 375 just feels like a much safer temperature.

[Hana] The second offshoot of the day, nice.

The difference here is bringing back the brown butter,

but not making any other changes.

It's definitely yielded a different texture.

It's drier veering on crumbling.

[Chris] Where we started yesterday more.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, it's both gratifying but also slightly maddening.

The same exact amount of butter browned

totally compromised the structure of this brownie.

I just wanna refresh my recollection of the control.

This gives me just a bit more boxed brownie,

but on steroids in a good way.

The texture is so good.

It's like if you can see your teeth marks.

I must say the sugar level is still a little high for me.

For you, interesting.

I feel like the sugar is part of what's giving us this.

Nice top.

It is more balanced than yesterday's,

but I think it can still go down to a cup.

I mean would you consider some flaky salt on top,

or no or like?

I feel like it takes you too far out of

the box brownie paradigm.

Okay, that's fair.

You gave me chips, I'm happy with the chips.

I gave you your chips get outta here.

I'm really happy with the control, but I do think

there's one more round of testing that we could do

just to control for this question of sweetness.

One test can be switching to bittersweet chocolate,

but keeping the sugar the same.

And one could be keeping the bar chocolate as is,

but just dropping the sugar by a quarter of a cup.

We are circling my platonic ideal of a brownie,

but we are close, you know, we're on approach,

but we gotta do, like, one more spin around in the air

before we can bring that sucker down.

Broad strokes, I think this is a great brownie,

one that I think could appeal to virtually anybody.

Big day, oh my goodness, my perfect brownie.

The platonic ideal is somewhere in one of these pans.

I was definitely apprehensive

at the beginning of this process

about whether we could really crack this one,

especially in just two days.

This is a moment of truth.

There have been many along the way.

Definitely pretty cocoa forward.

There's a richness here.

There's a richness and intensity of the cocoa flavor

that is very nice.

Let's check out the bittersweet.

I think the flavor balance is really nice

in this bittersweet.

I'm missing sugar here.

I also wonder with less sugar present,

still have a little bit of crackle,

but it's just not as pronounced.

Whereas, that bittersweet version,

you really get that sensation of glossiness,

that crackly surface.

[Kelly] How are you feeling?

I feel good.

Listen, like I said, it's never actually over,

but at a certain point somebody just has to yell cut, right?

I don't wanna be the only person to decide.

Hana went home, thank God.

So we don't have to argue about the sugar anymore.

Everyone can grab a bite.

Christie, I need you in there.

What did everyone think?

[Christine] It's amazing.

It's good?

This guy right here calling version six our winner.

It's mostly written out in our standard recipe language.

I just need to go in and make a few tweaks

and then see what happens on the cross tests.

It's so fun to look back at the evolution.

I mean, look at where we started,

the density, the matte finish.

Lack of any kind of real structure.

To see the progression, you know,

like, kind of all the way through here

to end up a little taller on the plate

having that lovely crackly surface,

lovely structure, ample chew, fudgyness.

Honestly, it's so gratifying.

It's a different perspective.

It's a different point of view on the brownie

and it's one that I hope people will really be into.

Double boiler, melt the butter and the chocolate.

Whisk in sugar, whisk in the eggs one by one, vanilla,

dry ingredients, flour, our cocoa powder, our salt,

and then chocolate chips and then boom,

right into the oven about half an hour.

I don't think it's that much harder

than driving to the store,

coming back and making something from a mix.

We kept the process simple,

but we made it really, really work hard.

This is my platonic ideal of a brownie.

It's a heck of a journey.

I'm really happy with how it came out.

[bright music]

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