Chocolate Chip Brownie Recipe | The Anthony Kitchen (2024)

FAQs

How do you keep chocolate chips hard in brownies? ›

Create resistance: Coat the chips with flour or cocoa

You can counteract this by coating the chips with some flour or cocoa before mixing them into the batter. Place the chips in a bowl or jar, add a bit of flour or cocoa — I use 1/2 teaspoon for up to 2 cups (340g) of chips — and stir or shake to coat.

But the cocoa powder also allows you, the baker, to control the fat and sugar content of your brownies. Cocoa brownies typically call for oil as the fat, and many call for blooming the cocoa in the oil, making for a deeply colored and distinctly chocolatey brownie.

And where melted chocolate introduces more moisture to the brownie and, consequently, requires additional flour to balance it out, cocoa powder can stand in for a portion of the flour. With less flour, the brownies taste barely bound, with no risk of cakiness or toughness.

Various causes include overbaking, underbaking, cutting the brownies too quickly, and lacking oil and fluid contents in the recipe. Underbaked and overbaked brownies turn out to be crumbly. When cut sooner before cooling down can make the brownies crumb.

When I make chocolate chip cookies, why don't the chocolate chips melt in the oven? Cooking chocolate tends to have less cocoa butter than eating chocolate, which raises the cooking chocolate's melting temperature and makes it more difficult to melt.

Using airtight wrappings (including using plastic wrap right against the brownies) is key to keeping your brownies fresh, whether you're keeping them at room temperature for short-term storage, or planning to freeze them so you can have a fresh brownie ready whenever you need it.

Fudgy brownies have a higher fat-to-flour ratio than cakey ones. So add more fat—in this case, butter and chocolate. A cakey batch has more flour and relies on baking powder for leavening. The amount of sugar and eggs does not change whether you're going fudgy or cakey.

Key Ingredients

Use any unsweetened cocoa powder in this recipe. I've used natural, Dutch-processed, and even raw cacao in this recipe. For a chocolate flavor similar to Oreo cookies, try Dutch cocoa. Butter: We use 100% butter in the recipe.

“When it comes to baking, I prefer Dutch process cocoa powder,” says former BA food editor Claire Saffitz. “The alkalizing process darkens the color and typically deepens the flavor.” Dutch process cocoa powder produces baked goods that taste more intensely chocolatey.

If you don't get rid of them, they can bake up into dry spots in your brownies. Take the extra few seconds to sift the amount of cocoa powder called for in the recipe with a sifter or a fine mesh strainer.

Can I use melted chocolate chips instead of cocoa powder? ›

How to Substitute Chocolate Chips. Here's how: For every 6 tablespoons of cocoa your recipe calls for, use 6 ounces of semi-sweet Sephra chocolate chips. In other words, one tablespoon of cocoa equals one ounce of melted Sephra chocolate chips.

Because most brands of hot chocolate powder include sugar or sweetener, you may wish to reduce the amount of sugar you add to your baking recipe. To use it as a cocoa powder substitute, you need to use two teaspoons of hot chocolate mix for every teaspoon of cocoa powder in the recipe.

In brownies, both butter and oil will offer a moist, tender texture, but only butter will give the dish the aeration needed for rising brownies well. If you use a cake brownie, butter is a better option because it helps rise the batter. For denser, fudge type brownies, oil is permissable.

If the toothpick comes out completely wet and coated with batter, you know the brownies are underdone and need more time. If the toothpick comes out with just a few crumbs clinging to it, the brownies are ready!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Place the undercooked brownies back in the baking pan they were originally baked in. Bake for an additional 5-10 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let the brownies cool completely before cutting and serving.

You don't add ingredients to chocolate to make it harden, you temper it by heating it to a specific temperature, cooling it to another temperature, then heating it again. This causes the chocolate to crystalize in a way that leaves it hard and shiny.

Any moisture will cause your chocolate to "seize" or harden. If you are working with large amounts of chocolate, consider putting only two-thirds of it in first. This will help it melt faster. It is possible to fix seized chocolate by adding cream to it, but this will affect your recipe.

The trick is getting the temperature right, not to hot, not too cool. You start by getting it hotter than letting it cool to about 90F (32C). Putting your chocolate into a a bowl of water helps keep the temperature stable too, if you've only got a little bit of chocolate.

You can keep melted chocolate from returning to a solid by maintaining it at a temperature between 88 and 90 F, according to Michigan State University. This is too cool for it to burn, but isn't warm enough for it to harden.