What should brownie mix look like

Show More Replies. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Service. Privacy Policy. Brownies are basically just five ingredients: chocolate, butter, sugar, eggs and flour. So what accounts for the million brownie recipes out there, each one claiming to be the world's best?

As those of us who feel strongly about caky versus fudgy know, ingredients are only half the story in the perfect-to-you brownie; it's what you do with them that counts. Baker and culinary historian Nancy Baggett surmises that though there were no printed brownie recipes in America before the 20th century, New Englanders were already baking the treats before that. Whatever their origins, the classic brownie formula has remained steadfast for over a century.

A brownie recipe published in by Massachusetts chocolate and cocoa merchant Walter M. Lowney calls for two ounces of unsweetened chocolate, a stick of butter, a cup of sugar, two eggs and half a cup of flour. The brownie recipe accompanying this story is very nearly the same, only with more unsweetened chocolate. So if the basic brownie recipe is so fundamental, why are there so many variations? One is technique. If you melt the butter with the chocolate and beat in the sugar and eggs, your brownies will be very different from ones made by first beating the eggs with the sugar until they triple in volume, then folding that into the melted chocolate and butter.

Some recipes call for creaming the butter, not melting it. Baking temperatures, pan size -- all of these things greatly influence the end product, even if the batter ingredients are nearly identical. Recipes included with this story: Crowd-pleasing Family Brownies. The other reason is that even small changes in the very simple brownie formula result in significant differences.

Sifting half a teaspoon of baking powder into the flour or adding an extra egg also will result in more caky brownies. With just a little fresh knowledge, you can learn to be a brownie decoder. Get the brownies you want with less work than ever by applying a few of the tips below to nearly any variant of the classic brownie recipe. Melt and mix all in one pan:. Veteran cookbook author and baking instructor Nick Malgieri developed a speedy technique to melt the chocolate and butter over direct heat, then mix the batter in that very pan.

No fussing with double boilers, and one less thing to wash. Cream cheese? Peanut butter? The possibilities are endless. Brownie textures fall into three general camps…Cakey, fudgy and chewy. Cakey brownies, like the name implies, are light, moist and airy, with a slightly fluffy, cake-like interior.

Fudgy brownies are moist, dense and gooey, with almost the texture of fudge, but not quite as compact. Personally, I think that a fudgy brownie is the only way to go. But, since we all have different preferences, let's look at different recipes and find the right brownie recipe for you.

The recipe for Ultimate Cakey Brownies has the least amount of butter, sugar and flour in it. A little bit of corn syrup is added to maintain the moistness. The first step is to beat the butter until it is soft, then add the sugar and beat until creamy.

By adding one more egg, the entire structure of the brownie is changed from chewy to cakey. Adding a bit more flour also helped get rid of some of the moistness in the recipe. If you've added to much oil or water to your mix then you'll need to compensate with extra dry ingredients. Depending on how much extra wet ingredients you added , perhaps 3x as much needed or more, you should also add a dash of flavoring to complement your mix.

If it's brownies or chocolate cake, add cocoa powder. If you add too much flour, your brownies will likely come out too dry and taste stale. If you're following a recipe to a T and your brownies still taste too dry , you may be overpacking the flour during the measuring process. If you scoop straight from the flour bag, you risk scooping too much! Bake the brownies for minutes.

The brownies should still wobble slightly in the middle, as they will continue to cook for a little while when removed from the oven. An over-baked brownie is dry and crumbly, rather than moist and fudgy, so keep an eye on them. Let the brownies cool completely in their tin.

Brownies are done when the toothpick comes out with a few moist crumbs still clinging. It's okay for the pick to look moist, but if you see wet batter , keep baking. Most brownie recipes instruct you to bake in a by 9- by 2-inch pan. Brownies baked in this type of pan usually rise to about 1 inch high. You can substitute a smaller 9- by 9- by 2-inch pan or 8- by 8- by 2-inch pan to increase the height to which your brownies will rise.

Bake brownies until firm to the touch and a tester inserted into the center comes out with moist crumbs not runny batter attached, 15—18 minutes. A bit thicker than pancake batter , but not so thick that it no longer counts as a liquid.

If you add an extra egg to brownie mix, you'll get a cake-like brownie , rather than a dense, chewy brownie. The extra egg adds volume and creates a soft, light texture.