Recipe: Good-Chocolate Brownies

I am a certified chocolate lover. One food for the rest of my life? Give me chocolate and I’ll be a happy lady. I’ll take fancy Valrhona or plain old Hershey’s; it’s all good.

It does beg the question though – when should you use The Good Stuff? My rule of thumb is that when the chocolate is the star, you better be using the best you can find. Chocolate chip cookies? Toll House will do. These brownies? You best believe I used semisweet Guittard chocolate. Oh Guittard, you sweet devil, you.

Domestocrat’s Good-Chocolate Brownies
8 oz. (about 1.25 cups) Good Chocolate, chips or chopped (as I said, I used Guittard semisweet chocolate chips, purchased at Whole Foods)
1 stick (8 tbsp.) unsalted butter
4 tbsp. cocoa powder
1 cup sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. salt
2 eggs
3 tbsp. greek yogurt
3/4 tsp. espresso powder
1 cup King Arthur unbleached cake flour (AP works too I’d imagine just don’t overmix!)

Start by melting the chocolate and butter together over a double boiler.

When it is fully melted, remove from the heat and stir in the espresso powder and cocoa powder. Make sure there are no lumps.

While the chocolate cools down a bit, gather the rest of the ingredients. Mix the sugar, vanilla, salt, eggs, and greek yogurt together. Carefully add the chocolate mixture and make sure they are fully incorporated.

I opted for cake flour here because I just got it and wanted to experiment. Cake flour, typically, is a finer flour that produces soft and moist cakes. It has a lower protein content than all purpose flour and is made from softer wheat berries. Bottom line, the texture you’ll get using cake flour is very soft and delicate.

Slowly incorporate the cake flour into the chocolate mixture. Don’t overmix here! Stop right when the flour has all mixed into the chocolate.

Line a square baking pan (mine was 12×12) with foil, grease, and bake on 350 degrees for 25 minutes. A toothpick inserted into the center should come out somewhat clean but the center should be a bit underdone/fudgey.

You know you made good brownies when the top is all crackly and delicious.

These brownies might just be my new go to recipe. The Good Chocolate obviously makes the whole thing – it’s rich and full of flavor, enhanced by its partner in crime: the espresso powder. The cake flour was a great choice too. The brownies are light but very moist and super fudgey. I think the greek yogurt was key in the chewiness as well. Overall, a must try if you like a robustly chocolately and moist brownies.

Now, I’m off to make some ice cream to put on top of one of these babies.