Hi Bold Bakers.
With over 15 years experience as a professional chef, I’ve definitely learned a thing or
two.
Here are my top five pro chef secrets on how you can make the fudgiest chocolate brownies.
A lot of you know my brownie recipe, you’ve tried it, you’ve loved it.
But today we’re gonna make it even better.
The recipe can be found on BiggerBolderBaking.com.
Ok lets get started with our first secret.
So secret number one…
brown sugar.
This is a key ingredient for fudge brownies.
A lot of people ask me can leave out the brown sugar and use all white?
I really implore you not to because brown sugar adds a lot of moisture and it also adds
more flavor, kind of a caramel flavor so it’s really important.
Now, if you can’t buy this in your country you can easily make it at home, and I’ve
got a recipe on my website.
So secret number two is use good quality cocoa powder and it’ll take your brownie from
good to absolutely awesome.
Now I’m gonna show you what I use, here we have unsweetened cocoa powder.
It’s good quality and has no sugar added, it’s perfect for baking.
Now, you can also use a Dutch Process cocoa powder.
Now this is a little bit less bitter, more smooth and it’s also this lovely dark, red
color it’s really beautiful.
So you can use either of those.
Let me tell you what you cannot use…
hot chocolate powder.
Don’t use hot chocolate powder.
It’s an absolute no, it has dried milk in there it has sugar, and it’s not top quality
chocolate.
Please, don’t use hot chocolate powder.
Now secret three is all about seasoning your brownies.
Now this is really important because brownies just aren’t chocolate.
They’re also vanilla and a little bit salty.
So here’s what I want you to do, add in some vanilla extract and don’t leave it
out, it makes such a difference to your brownies, it just enhances the other ingredients of
your brownies, and it just makes them that little bit sweeter and special.
So the second ingredient is salt and you guys know I’m crazy about salt.
Now here’s the thing, it’s just as much for sweet food as it is for savory.
It flavors all of the ingredients in there it’ll bring out the notes of your vanilla
your chocolate, everything.
So be generous with your salt and I guarantee you’ll taste the difference.
Ok secret number four is chocolate chunkage, I wanna talk about what kind of chocolate
I want you to use in your brownies.
This is a bittersweet chocolate so something that’s around 70% cocoa solids.
It’s gonna give you the right amount of deep dark chocolate, small amount of bitterness
and sweetness too.
These go really well.
Again, I recommend buying high quality chocolate, I use Ghirardelli.
You can find really good brands in your store.
So secret number five is a really important one if you want fudgy brownies don’t overtake
them.
Put them in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 180 degrees celsius for roughly 35 maybe
40 minutes.
The secret to fudge brownies is not to over-bake them, firm around the edges but still a little
bit soft in the middle when they come out of the oven.
So our brownies are out of the oven they took around 35 minutes, now come here to me because
I want to show you what you’re looking for.
You can see that they’re kind of firm around the edges but if you go to the middle, it
feels a little squishy around your finger and like they’re not done, and that means,
they’re perfectly done.
This is what you want, you don’t want them to be firm you want that bit of squishiness,
and you know under the surface that’s pure fudge.
Also I want you to factor in once you take these out of the oven and they cool down,
they’ll actually set up even further so you want to undertake them to make sure that
you don’t do too much.
So here’s the last little tip I’m gonna leave you with, you always wanna heat up your
brownies.
Throw it in the microwave or heat them up in the oven, when these guys are warm they
are just heaven.
Throw on a little ice cream a little chocolate sauce, forget about it, these are absolute
heaven.
Yep, this is one fudge brownie oh my gosh.
Head over to my website for this recipe and all my tips.
I’ll see you back here really soon for more Bigger Bolder Baking.