In this edition of Epicurious 101, professional chef and culinary instructor Frank Proto demonstrates how to make the best brownies at home. From the best cocoa powder to using coffee powder to boost the chocolatey flavor, follow Frank’s steps to get the best fudgy brownies every time.
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00:00I'm Frank Proto, professional chef and culinary instructor,
00:02and today I'm gonna show you how to make
00:04the best brownies you've ever had.
00:08We're talking dark, decadent, delicious fudgy brownies.
00:12This is Brownies 101.
00:15I personally like my brownies thin, dark, and fudgy.
00:18Fudgy brownies have so much more going for them
00:20than a cake-like brownie.
00:22Cake-like brownies are dry, they're a little spongy.
00:25These are chewy and gooey.
00:28They have a great mouthfeel, and they're just
00:30more satisfying than a light and fluffy brownie.
00:36You should prepare your pan before you start
00:37mixing any of your ingredients.
00:39You want it ready to go when your batter is ready.
00:41I have a nine by 13 metal pan.
00:43You could use glass, but glass holds onto the heat,
00:46and I find that my brownies tend to overcook in glass,
00:49so that's why I like metal.
00:50Once you take it out of the oven,
00:52the heat dissipates a lot quicker.
00:54Because my pan is so deep, I like to line it
00:56with some parchment paper.
00:58And even though I'm using parchment paper,
01:00I wanna be sure to butter it because I don't want
01:02the parchment to stick to the pan,
01:04and I want it to come out really easy.
01:06So I'm gonna get it really buttered well up on the sides,
01:10in the corners, right?
01:11And I want parchment, just to be sure
01:13these brownies come out of the pan.
01:14I'm gonna get it into the corners.
01:16And you see how that butter makes the parchment
01:18stick really well, which I love.
01:20And then what I do here, this is origami with Chef Frank.
01:24I want the parchment to cover the bottom of the pan.
01:27This little sling will hold our brownies into like a loaf,
01:30and kind of keep that integrity of the brownies.
01:32They won't crumble and fall apart as we take them out.
01:35So you can see that I have my pan lined really well.
01:38Let's move on to making our batter.
01:42So I have all the ingredients laid out
01:44for my brownie batter.
01:45I'm gonna start with chopping up some chocolate
01:47that we're gonna sprinkle on top of our brownies
01:49before they go in the oven.
01:50And I don't mind if it's like different sizes,
01:52some big chunks, some small chunks.
01:55I like that you get the bite of that fudgy brownie
01:57and then a toothiness of the chocolate chip.
01:59When I put chocolate on top of the brownies,
02:01I like to use something that's not super sweet.
02:03So I tend to go for a bitter chocolate,
02:05something in the range of like, you know, 70% cocoa.
02:08The brownies are sweet enough themselves.
02:10The chocolate is just gonna be a little bit
02:12of a bitter accent, which I really like.
02:14You can see that I'm not shy with the chocolate either.
02:16I use chopped chocolate instead of chocolate chips
02:18because this is just a better quality chocolate.
02:21Chocolate chips would be perfectly fine,
02:23but I find when you buy better ingredients,
02:25you get a better end product.
02:26Now that the chocolate's chopped, I can make the batter.
02:28And I like to start out with my dry ingredients.
02:31I'm gonna sift them.
02:32If you don't wanna sift them,
02:33you can always just put them in a bowl
02:34and whisk them together.
02:35I take the flour, goes into the sifter.
02:38If you don't sift, you could get lumps in your batter,
02:41and that is not pleasant.
02:42So we want to have all the dry ingredients
02:45combined really well so there's no lumps, okay?
02:47Cocoa powder.
02:49I try and find a nice dark cocoa powder like Dutch Process,
02:51which makes the cocoa a little more mellow,
02:53but it makes it a lot darker and richer.
02:56With every recipe,
02:57I try and find the best ingredients I can buy.
02:59I tend to stay away from brands like Hershey's.
03:01It's an okay product.
03:02I just feel like it's bland
03:04and it's kind of like not dark enough,
03:05and it doesn't have a lot of chocolatey flavor,
03:07believe it or not.
03:08I have my salt.
03:09I have my baking powder, which is my leavener.
03:12I have some instant coffee powder.
03:14Now, if you've never done instant coffee powder
03:16in your brownies, you really don't taste the coffee,
03:19but it's kind of a flavor enhancer to chocolate.
03:21So a little bit of coffee powder
03:23really does boost that chocolate flavor.
03:25So if you're worried about there being too much caffeine
03:27in your brownies,
03:28first of all, we only used a very small amount.
03:30Second of all, if you don't like it, you can take it out.
03:32Just take my whisk and push this through into the bowl.
03:37If you look, there's kind of like little lumps
03:39and stuff like that, and that's not pleasant mouthfeel.
03:42You'll get a bite of salt.
03:43Maybe you'll get a bite of dry cocoa
03:45and it's not really delicious.
03:46Time for the wet ingredients.
03:48And part of the reason why I do my dry ingredients first
03:50is that I can blend them together
03:52and then I can use the same whisk
03:53because I don't want to clean two whisks
03:55to do my wet ingredients.
03:56So I have my white sugar and brown sugar.
03:59Now, the reason I'm using two sugars
04:00is the white sugar is there for just basic sweetness
04:03and the brown sugar has some richness
04:05from the molasses in it.
04:06It also helps make our brownie a little more fudgy
04:09and a little more gooey.
04:10Part of the reason I like to use my sugar
04:12as a wet ingredient is that
04:14sometimes brown sugar has lumps as well.
04:17And if you add it to the liquid ingredients,
04:19it breaks those lumps up
04:20and I don't want to have lumps of brown sugar, right?
04:22So I'm using some vegetable oil or neutral oil
04:26and I'm using some melted butter.
04:28So what the oil does is it makes our brownies
04:31nice and tender and fudgy.
04:33It gives the texture of the brownie that we want.
04:36Whereas the butter is giving us some flavors.
04:38Some vanilla extract and then four whole eggs.
04:42Of course we need eggs.
04:44Eggs are one of those things that like
04:45is the magic ingredient for most baked goods.
04:48They add moisture, they add fat, they add flavor
04:51and they basically hold everything together.
04:53Eggs are the glue of baking.
04:54And then I'm just gonna break everything up
04:56and now all I'm gonna do with this
04:57is really bring it together.
04:59If I have any lumps, break it up with a whisk
05:01and just make sure it's combined really well.
05:03Now at this point, I can get rid of my whisk.
05:05What I'm gonna do is actually get it together
05:07with a rubber spatula.
05:09So one of the rules is something that I follow
05:11whenever I'm mixing a batter like this
05:12is I try not to over mix.
05:14For the most part, this batter has tons of fat in it.
05:17It has lots of cocoa powder in it
05:20and to over mix it would be really hard.
05:23But we also don't wanna activate that gluten
05:25and make these tough.
05:26So you wanna get it till it's just smooth
05:28and there's no lumps and then you're good to go.
05:30It comes together really nice and it looks super silky
05:33and that's pretty much all you want.
05:35Make sure you scrape down to the bottom,
05:37scrape the sides and then we can go into the pan.
05:40And if this is free flowing enough
05:42that it doesn't really need to be smoothed out
05:44all that much, you can just basically
05:46try to get into the corners.
05:48Don't go too crazy knocking any of the bubbles out.
05:51Now I can put my chocolate chips on, right?
05:53And I try and sprinkle them evenly
05:55and I get to the edges and I get into the corners
05:58because there's nothing worse than getting a corner piece
06:01or an edge piece that doesn't have chocolate chips.
06:03So be generous, not just piling them in the center.
06:06So now all we have to do is bake them.
06:07These are gonna go into a preheated 350 degree oven
06:11for about 20 minutes.
06:12Now, I say about because you want to look at the brownies.
06:14If you give them a little wiggle
06:16and they have just a little bit of shake in the middle,
06:18that's when you wanna take them out
06:20because believe it or not,
06:21when you take things out of the oven, they carry over.
06:23They continue to cook for about three to five minutes.
06:26So if you have a little bit of wiggle, take them out.
06:28They'll finish cooking out of the oven
06:30and you'll have a perfectly fudgy result.
06:35All right, these look really good.
06:36You can see, if you give it a little shake,
06:38you see there's a little shimmy, a little wiggle,
06:40that's what I want.
06:41Test your brownies before you take them out.
06:43You want it to be a little dirty, not liquidy.
06:46If it's still liquid when you poke it in the center
06:48with your knife or your toothpick, it's underdone
06:50and they're gonna be batter in the tray.
06:52So let them get to the point
06:54where they start to just rise a little
06:56and the knife or the toothpick comes out
06:57so it's a little dirty, not liquidy.
06:59If it comes out super clean,
07:01I kind of feel like brownies are overcooked.
07:03Maybe with cake, it might be okay,
07:05but with brownies, you want it to come out
07:07a little on the dirty side.
07:08Make sure you're letting it sit
07:10until it's completely cool, right?
07:12It shouldn't be warm at all.
07:13It should be completely cool
07:14before you start cutting into it.
07:16They've been sitting and they've formed up really perfect.
07:19There's no like really dome in the center
07:21where it got cakey.
07:22They're gonna be really nice and fudgy.
07:24Okay, it's time to come out.
07:26I'm gonna just kind of go nice and easy
07:28because I don't want it to break.
07:30Make sure that it's loosened from the sides
07:34and I can lift it out nice and easy, right?
07:37So get rid of that with the old elbow.
07:40And you can see my brownie.
07:42Because we took the time to put that parchment on there
07:45and butter it up, it comes out in one really nice piece.
07:48So a lot of times you see brownies come out
07:49with a crinkly, shiny top
07:51and people see that as a hallmark of a good brownie.
07:53Now, I've had brownies with crinkly, shiny tops
07:56that were absolutely awful, right?
07:58I've had box brownies that have a crinkly, shiny top.
08:00It is not the hallmark of a good brownie.
08:02The hallmark of a good brownie is how it tastes, right?
08:05So if you don't get that shiny, crinkly top,
08:07don't stress out.
08:08It's still gonna be delicious.
08:10That is not the only thing that says what a good brownie is.
08:13I like generous sized brownies.
08:14I'm just gonna go in thirds here
08:17and then nice, big, beautiful brownies.
08:22And then we can put them on a plate
08:23but I want you to just see the inside there.
08:25It's moist, right?
08:27You can see that it's not cakey and really thick.
08:30Usually if you get a cakey brownie,
08:31it's gonna be big and puffy, but look at that.
08:33You can see that the chocolate chips are melty
08:36and not super firm.
08:38And here we have my perfectly baked,
08:40fudgy, chewy, gooey brownies.
08:43It is time to taste.
08:45First of all, I've got to point out,
08:46look how rich and dense these are.
08:49They have those chocolate chips on top.
08:50Okay, okay, stop talking.
08:55A lot of times you get a brownie that does not deliver.
08:58It looks really dark.
09:00It doesn't taste chocolatey,
09:02but this thing is like a chocolate bomb.
09:03It's absolutely delicious.
09:05The chips on top offset the sweetness of the brownie itself.
09:09The texture is amazing.
09:11This is like the perfect brownie.
09:13Taking the time to do these from scratch
09:14and choosing the best quality ingredients
09:16you can get your hands on
09:18will always make these the best brownies you've ever had.
09:23I got fudgy fingers.
09:24I put fudgy fingers.