Jacquiline
May I introduce to you, the Best Dark Chocolate Brownie!
After months of taste testing, this version of my dark chocolate recipe totally deserves its title as BEST.
Friends, I must say it’s rough being a brownie tester. I mean, it’s truly been unfortunate that we’ve been eating multiple versions of these brownies every week for the past 4 weeks after the girls go to bed. They fill our house with their gooey brownie like aroma in the evenings and sometimes the smell even lingers until the next day. I’m telling you, we’re suffering over here! As I’m sure you can guess, my husband complains a lot about being a brownie tester.
If you’d like to put yourself or spouse through such misery I recommend you make these. But in all honesty, this brownie recipe took a lot of editing before it became my best tasting dark chocolate brownie.
Let me begin; you see I initially started out by attempting to make a gluten free, dairy free, and refined sugar free brownie. Why you ask? I suppose I was trying to be “creative” in the baking department and making it as such sounded like a challenging idea. Well let me tell you, it failed with a capital F! It was dry and bitter and honestly, chalky tasting. Yuck! So, I went back to the drawing board and decided to add dairy back in, and then flour, and then sugar. Suddenly my gluten free, dairy free, refined sugar free brownie was unrecognizable. And let me tell you, it was the best thing I ever did!!
The lesson was learned. DO NOT MESS WITH THE BROWNIE. Unless you have some allergy or sensitivity, retain the legacy of what a brownie is supposed to be-full of butter, flour, sugar, and really really good chocolate.
That was the other lesson I learned. Not all chocolate is created equal. If you want delicious brownies, buy delicious chocolate. The kind of chocolate that you would buy as a gift or to really treat yourself. For this recipe, I used Ghirardelli’s Intense 72% cocoa Dark Chocolate, I recommend the 6 pack, because you can never have too much chocolate brownies around the house. And let me tell you, that was a winning decision to use high quality chocolate!
And the last lesson I learned; use extra salt. I initially kept putting in a ¼ teaspoon of salt and they were just turning out too sweet. Bump it up to ½ teaspoon and a magical balance of salty and sweet will happen. It’s glorious!
Now go, buy some delicious chocolate, butter, sugar and flour and make the Best Dark Chocolate Brownie! Enjoy, friends!
- 1/2 cup softened unsalted butter
- 10 squares 72% Ghirardelli Chocolate Bar (3.5 oz) Each 3.5 oz bar comes with 8 squares
- 1 1/4 cups sugar
- 2 room temperature eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 heaping tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cups flour
- 4 squares chopped 72% Ghirardelli Chocolate
- powdered sugar for dusting (optional)
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
- In a heatproof bowl over simmering water, melt the chocolate and butter together.
- Take the bowl off the heat and stir in the sugar, vanilla and eggs.
- In a separate bowl. Stir together the cocoa powder, salt, and flour.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients.
- Gently stir into your brownie batter your chopped chocolate.
- Pour into a greased 8x8 baking dish and bake for approximately 38-45 minutes for a glass baking dish and 23-27 minutes 9x9 baking dish. Check with toothpick until it just is just barely clean. The brownies will continue to bake for a couple minutes once out of the oven.
- Let cool and serve with a dusting of powdered sugar. Enjoy my Best Dark Chocolate Recipe!