Brownies, Simplified!
My first ever batch of tahini swirl brownies!
I recently came up with a much simpler recipe for brownies. Brownies are one of the easiest desserts to make! The prep work is minimal, and baking doesn’t take long as well.
The goal of this post is to give you a simple framework and go-to recipe. I highly recommend looking around for more ideas/inspiration for modifying your brownies to your liking!
Scroll down to “The Specifics” section if you just want some plain ol’ measurements!
Core Recipe & Steps
Ingredients
- Sugar
- Butter
- Flour
- Cocoa powder
- Eggs
- Vanilla extract
- Salt
- Additions/toppings (optional) (some ideas)
- Chocolate chunks/chips (you can buy a bar and chop it up, or just buy chips)
- Chopped nuts
- Tahini (this is what I used)
Here is a very-easy-to-memorize ratio. Do these by weight (it saves you a lot of cleanup time). I’ll include the specific weights I used at the bottom of this post for your reference.
1:1:2:3 (flour to cocoa powder to butter to sugar)
For every 80-120 grams of flour, use 2 eggs, 3-5 grams of salt, 10 grams of vanilla extract
Update: This ratio will give you brownies that are a bit greasy and loose. I recommend adding an additional 10% of flour and cocoa powder (reflected in the new numbers given below) to hold things together and reduce the amount of excess grease.
For example, if you are using 90g of flour, bump it up to 100g (roughly 10% extra) and do the same for the cocoa powder, while keeping the butter and sugar the same.
Steps
- Preheat oven, 350 F (180 C)
- Melt butter (microwave)
- Mix butter, sugar, vanilla extract, eggs (once butter has cooled slightly so it doesn’t cook the eggs)
- Add in flour, cocoa powder, salt, and additions (ie. chocolate chunks)
- Spread mix into a baking pan, lined with parchment paper
- Optional: Add toppings (ie. tahini)
- Bake, until a toothpick can be stabbed into the centre and come out cleanly (time depends on thickness, but I’d start off with at least 20-25 minutes and go from there. Refer to the photos/videos below to get an understanding and some reference)
- Transfer to cooling rack to rest. Rest for at least 10 minutes or until it is firm enough that you can cut into it without falling apart.
- Enjoy 😋
Quick Reference Recipe
Here is what I used (updated weights):
- Flour, 100g
- Cocoa powder, 100g
- Butter, 180g
- Sugar, 270g (135g white, 135g brown)
- Salt, 4g
- Eggs, 2
- Vanilla, 10g
- Chocolate bar, 100g (chopped)
- Tahini, 4-5 dollops on top
I also used a 9x9” square baking pan, which resulted in brownies that were roughly 1” in height. This took roughly 27 minutes for me to bake. Once they were out of the oven, I did a very light sprinkling of salt to enhance the flavour. Here is a photo for reference:
Brownies in a 9×9” baking pan
Variations
- To make the brownie more chewy, use a mix of brown sugar (I used 50% white and 50% brown sugar, but you can play around with this). Using brown sugar does increase moisture levels, so consider using a bit more flour/cocoa powder to balance things out.
- To make the brownie more cake-like, instead of fudgy/chewy, decrease the butter ratio to 1 part, instead of 2. You can also add a slight amount of baking powder (I opted to keep this out, since I wanted to keep the list of ingredients as small as possible).
- You might find the resulting brownie to be a bit too greasy, or too sweet (or not sweet enough). Feel free to play around with the weights!
- On my first run, it seemed like the parchment paper had too much extra grease (from the butter), so I’d remove maybe 10-20 grams of butter.
- With my ratio, I already reduced the amount of sugar going in (compared to other recipes). My family found that the brownies hit a nice balance between bitter (from the cocoa powder and dark chocolate chunks) and sweet. If you like things on the sweeter end, consider adding a bit more sugar.
A closeup shot of the brownies I made!
Additional Resources
I always advocate for learning by experience, instead of blindly following instructions. And so I think it is best to take my base recipe and experiment around. I also highly recommend looking at videos of baking brownies to get an understanding of how other people do things. You’ll develop your instincts naturally overtime!
Helpful recipes/articles:
Fudgey Brownies - Joshua Weissman
Best Ever Chewy Brownies - Handle The Heat
Our Favourite Easy Fudgy Brownies - Inspired Taste