People who really, really love chocolate are dubious about cocoa. Even if you buy the most resplendent cocoa in the world, baking things with it that taste as rich as treats with bars of 70% is a rarity. Thus, if you’d told me about a killer recipe for cocoa brownies a couple weeks ago, I wouldn’t have believed you, but since then, two things have happened.

The first is that I had one. It was a tiny square, scattered among little tears of homemade marshmallows, near a puddle of homemade hot fudge sauce and carousel-ed around a cocoa nib buckwheat panna cotta at 10 Downing last week that nothing short of blew my mind because did you know that the opposite of sweet in the world of chocolate needn’t necessarily be bitter? Sometimes it’s just not very sweet, period, so you can really taste the chocolate. It was awesome*, all of it.

The second is that I looked up a well-regarded cocoa brownie recipe and the description did me in. Here cocoa is not listed as a compromise — something to use just because might already have in your pantry, something shelf-stable for a brownie mix longevity, etc. — but as an intention. For the “chewiest, candylike top”, the only fat in Medrich’s brownie is from butter, not a mix of butter and the cocoa butter that comes in bar chocolate and all of the sugar is pure granulated sugar, and not a mix of it and the milled sugar used in commercial chocolate production. I had never considered either thing before, but there I was nodding along, eagerly agreeing.





The result is something that could convert those that believe the all roads to fudgy, dark and rich brownies must be paved bricks of tempered chocolate. And now I’m going to say something that will surely make a good lot of you turn away from this recipe and never look back, although you shouldn’t: I believe these brownies will be especially beloved by people who enjoy box mix brownies. They share a moist, dense crumb, though fortunately — for me at least, who finds the taste of boxed brownies to staggeringly lack — not a flavor. Because the only wet ingredients are eggs, butter and vanilla (and the vanilla could be swapped with a scrape of a fresh bean segment rubbed into sugar), they’d also be ripe for a Homemade Brownie Mix Gift Kit. You know, if you were feeling generous enough to share, which may not be your first reaction.





* Speaking of “awesome”.

Brownies, previously: [I cannot pick a favorite. I have no brownie loyalty, and frankly, if I did, how would I ever discover new recipes like this?] Classic Brownies, Peanut Butter Brownies, The Baked Brownie, Spiced Up, Brownie Mosaic Cheesecake, Pumpkin Swirl Brownies, Belgian Brownies, Outrageous Brownies, Cheesecake Marbled Brownies, Grasshopper Brownies and Brownie Roll-Out Cookies

One year ago: Warm Butternut Squash and Chickpea Salad

Two years ago: Rigatoni with Eggplant Puree

Three years ago: Icebox Cake