Having never made brownies from scratch (unthinkable to some), I was really on the lookout for a good recipe. I think I always made “box” brownies because I thought melting chocolate was always part of the deal. I was just unsure of, you know… double boiler, making sure not to overheat the chocolate, yada, yada, yada. I never thought to look for easy recipes. So, when my husband and I saw a few recipes using cocoa powder, it was like the clouds opened up and rays of sunshine shone onto the mixing bowls. Alright, it wasn’t that dramatic, but we thought, “HEY! We can DO THIS!”
Actually, we were going to bake together since my husband is more like the “McGyver” in the kitchen and doesn’t follow recipes. He ended up doing most, if not all, of it alone because I ran out of the house at the wrong time to run an errand. What we ended up with was a nice small batch of the most fudgy brownies I’ve had in a long time. The pan was quartered into sections: plain brownie, brownie with caramel, salted brownie, brownie with salt and caramel.
He even made the caramel from scratch (took two tries)!
Not so good caramel attempt
For an 8 x 8 pan, you might be surprised how long it lasted. We cut the brownies into 1-inch squares. That’s all you need for a taste – it’s so rich!
The recipe we used is from Smitten Kitchen, and can be found here. I’ll be trying this recipe out again with some Scharffen Berger cocoa…mmm.
Other cocoa brownie recipes:
- Alton Brown’s cocoa brownies
- Hershey’s best brownies
