Recipes for Readers – Ultimate Chocolate Brownies from Molly MacRae

 

I have more recipes for brownies than you can shake a stick of butter at. One might wonder how a recipe that calls itself “ultimate” stacks up against the others, but there’s no need. The word ultimate almost isn’t good enough. 

Ultimate Chocolate Brownies

(adapted from 7 Great Ways to Make it Chocolate with Hershey’s® Recipe Sampler, Hershey Foods Corporation, 1987)

Makes 24 to 36 brownies (Who cuts brownies so small they get 36? Not happening here.)

Ingredients

3/4 cup cocoa

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

2/3 cup unsalted butter, divided and melted

1/2 cup boiling water

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup chocolate chips (my favorite is Ghirardelli 60% cacao)

 

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease a 13x9x2-inch pan (or 2 8x8x2-inch pans).

In a medium bowl, whisk together cocoa and baking soda. Blend in 1/3 cup of the melted butter. Add boiling water and stir until mixture thickens.

Stir in eggs, sugar, and remaining melted butter, stirring until smooth. Add flour, salt, and vanilla. Blend completely.

Now you have a choice. You can either stir in the chocolate chips or wait and sprinkle them on top of the batter after you’ve poured it in the pan(s). If you’re using Ghirardelli chips, I suggest sprinkling them on top of the batter. They’re so robust, they tend to sink to the bottom if you mix them into the batter. Other chips won’t.

Pour batter into prepared pan(s). Bake for 35 to 40 minutes for rectangular pan or until brownies begin to pull away from sides. Bake 30 to 35 minutes for square pans. Cool completely, in pan(s), before cutting.

You can frost the brownies (the original recipe has you spread a really good buttercream frosting on the cooled brownies) but they’re perfect without frosting so why mess up another bowl while messing with perfection?    

Pair these soulful brownies with a sinful scoop of ice cream and a delicious short story. May I suggest “Ice Cream Allure,” by our blog’s own E.B. Davis? The story is a romantic mystery spoof in which Carlotta, depressed after losing her job as the food critic for The Charlotte Dispatch, and drained by a summer of sultry and simmering heat, breaks into a creamery. Is she obsessed with the ice cream or with the ice cream maker? You’ll find the answer, and the story, in Carolina Crimes:19 Tales of Lust, Love, and Longing.