Welcome to Never Fail, a semi-regular column where we wax poetic about the recipes that never, ever let us down. This week: the brownie recipe that our web editor, Carey Polis, just couldn't live without.
Wouldn't the Internet be a simpler place if instead of having 79 million search results for brownie recipes, there were just a tidy handful of truly incredible ones?
In my fantasy world, the result that would appear at the top of this list, forever and always, would be these cocoa brownies. Sure, the name isn't flashy with cliché adjectives and modifiers. In fact, nothing about the recipe itself makes it seem so otherworldly. Except that note at the top that claims "The best—and easiest—brownies you'll ever make." That's all you need to know.
You don't need any fancy kitchen equipment to make them. You don't even need the Scharffen Berger natural unsweetened cocoa powder that the recipe recommends using. (I mean, you do need cocoa powder, but Hershey's or another one will still be fine). You don't need to melt the butter in a saucepan (microwave is fine), and you don't really even need to "know how to bake."
This is pretty much just a dump-and-stir brownie recipe—one that yields fantastic results. So if you've always been the person who is like "I can't bake to save my life," just try to mess these up. I dare you.
The best part of these brownies is that when you take them out of the oven, they're still super gooey and kind of raw in the best way. They practically fall apart, leaving chocolate stains on your fingertips.
You can cut them into squares and put them on a plate like normal humans do, but I've been known to grab them right out of the tray in handfuls, eating them over the sink as crumbs fall off my arm. It's not a pretty sight, but this is not a time for manners. It's a time for admitting that you're an adult—dammit—and thus can eat four brownies at once if you want. Otherwise, what's the point of growing up?
Get the recipe:
