Hey everyone! It’s Sierra here, and today I am so excited to share with you guys a recipe for these fudgy brown butter brownies that I’ve spent almost a month working on! It was worth the effort because I am so happy with how dense and chocolatey these brownies turned out.

I’d been wanting to make a brownie recipe for a while after waking up one day and craving a fudgy brownie. There were just two main characteristics I wanted my brownies to have: shiny cracked top and a fudgy texture (as opposed to cakey). I didn’t initially set out to make brown butter brownies, but after trying it on a whim (inspired by how amazing they made my chocolate chip cookies taste), there was no going back to regular melted butter.

Keys To a Complex Brownie Flavor

Brown butter. After this recipe, I think I’m going to use brown butter instead of melted butter in all baked goods that call for it. The nutty, complex flavor that is achieved through browning the butter just adds such an incredible flavor to whatever baked goods it’s used in. Whether it was the aforementioned chocolate chip cookies or these brown butter brownies, you can definitely tell the difference that brown butter makes.

The best part is, it’s so easy to make brown butter! All you have to do is melt the butter in a pot over medium heat while stirring until it turns brown and smells nutty. That’s it. It’s almost as easy as just melting butter in the microwave, but the results are astronomically tastier.

Coffee. Believe it or not, adding a bit of coffee to your brownies will actually enhance the chocolate flavor. Chocolate and coffee have similar flavor profiles, so when they are combined, it brings out the best of both.

Sea Salt. This one was really shocking to me. I always thought it was blasphemous to add sea salt to a brownie, but when I tried it, I was very pleasantly surprised. The slight saltiness from the sea salt flakes helps bring out even more flavors of sweetness and chocolate.

Keys to a Fudgy Brownie

Through my trials, there were a few things I discovered to help make brownies as fudgy as possible.

First, I found that using both Dutch-processed cocoa powder and melted chocolate yielded the best results. This makes sense because I am able to pack so much chocolate into the batter. The melted chocolate helps the resulting brownie have a nice smooth texture when you bite into it, while the cocoa powder adds an intense chocolate flavor. To learn more about the role of chocolate in baking, check out Kevin’s in-depth post!

Second, some recipes online call for the use of baking soda or baking powder, but I omitted it from my recipe. If you don’t know, baking soda and baking powder are leavening agents, used to help your baked goods rise. However, I found that using either one resulted in the brownie turning out too cakey for my taste. Instead, I whipped the eggs until they double in size to incorporate air into the dough, which acts as a natural leavening that didn’t turn the brownie cakey.

Keys to a Shiny Cracked Top

My other goal was making my brownies have a beautiful shiny and cracked top just like those brownies you see on magazine covers. This one took a lot of experimentation, and I can’t explain why everything works the way it does, but these are the techniques that worked the best for me.

• Use room temperature eggs: if you forget to take your eggs out an hour before baking, you can soak them in warm water for a few minutes
• Whip eggs with sugar until fully dissolved and fluffy: this is the tip that is most repeated online for how to get that thin shiny layer
• Mix in the melted chocolate and butter mixture with your batter while it is still warm
• Don’t overfold the sifted flour and cocoa powder: stop folding it once all of the dry ingredients have disappeared
• After the batter is poured into the pan, smooth the top with a spatula: this creates a nice smooth and level surface for the crust to form on

While not all of these are backed by science (not that I know of at least), I can say from my month of experimentation that these tips work.

With these tips in hand, you are ready to make your own decadent, fudgy brown butter brownies!

Looking for more decadent desserts?

• Chewy Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookies
• S’mores Tarts
• Zucchini Mochi Brownies

If you like our recipes, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Yummly, and Twitter to stay in touch for the latest updates!