How to make better brownies, chocolate cookies, and cakes?

First, use better cocoa.  I mean better than the cocoa you'll find in the grocery stores. Grocery stores compete on price. You're not likely to find really good cocoa in your grocery store.

How to Get Chocolate Right

Our Search for Just the Right Amount of Chocolate

The Ultimate Chocolate Brownies

We recommend Ramstadt Breda Rich Dark Cocoa or Belcolade Dark Cocoa. Be sure that your cocoa has a high cocoa butter content.

Ingredients

• 1 cup Ramstadt Breda Rich Dark Cocoa with 22/24 cocoa butter cocoa or equal
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 sticks (1 cup) butter, melted
• 2 1/4 cups sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 6 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 cups walnut pieces

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. You will need a 9 x 13-inch baking pan, two mixing bowls—one of them medium or large, and a whisk. The larger bowl should be microwave safe to save you a step. We recommend using parchment paper.
2. Grease the pan with a little shortening and line it with parchment paper. The shortening will hold the paper in place. Set aside.
3. In the smaller of the two bowls, whisk the cocoa and flour together to break up any clumps and disperse the cocoa. Set aside.
4. In the larger of the two bowls, melt the butter in the microwave. Add the sugar and the salt and stir. Add the eggs and the vanilla and stir until mixed.
5. Add the cocoa and flour mixture to the liquid mixture. Stir until combined. Add the chopped nuts and stir.
6. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan with a spatula and spread the batter evenly. Bake for 25 minutes in a dark pan or until the toothpick comes out fairly clean but with some batter on it.
7. Place the pan on a wire rack and cool for five minutes then, grasping the edge of parchment paper and tipping the pan up over a wire rack, pull the cake onto the wire rack. Let cool for at least another five minutes and then slip the cake onto a cutting board for slicing.

How to Customize your Chocolate Recipes

1. Choose your cocoa.

There is really good cocoa and then there is just cocoa. The difference is amazing. We have never found really good cocoa that didn't have at least twice the cocoa butter found in the store.

Store cocoa has 8-10% cocoa butter. Our milk chocolate (medium) has 16-18%. Our dark cocoas have 22-24% cocoa butter!

Check the reviews. It makes a dramatic difference in everything you bake.

Ramstadt Breda Medium-Dark Cocoa
Ramstadt Breda Rich-Dark Cocoa
Belcolade Dark Cocoa

Both dark cocoas are rich and dark. The medium dark is more like milk chocolate but it’s still richer than almost all grocery store cocoa.

2. If it needs more chocolate, add more.

Add more chocolate. Most recipes can handle more chocolate if your cocoa is good enough. We did another survey of reputable recipes and found them to have from 11% cocoa to 38% cocoa.

Because cocoa contains starch, it absorbs moisture. Consequently, when you add cocoa to a recipe, you must reduce the flour. Reduce the amount of flour by 1/3 cup for each 1/2 cup of cocoa.

3. Adjust the sugar

Sugar is a powerful ingredient. It doesn't take much to alter the taste of your dessert whether you choose to use more or less. And it disperses well. The liquid in your batter melts the sugar and it doesn't take much stirring to disperse the melted sugar through the batter.

You can add more sugar but you can't take it out. If you think you're going to want the brownie or other dessert to be less sweet, short the sugar in the recipe before starting.  

Taste the batter.  If it tastes about right, go ahead and bake it.  If it's not sweet enough, add more sugar.

Sugar acts as a liquid in your recipe. Liquid dissolves it. Heat melts it.  Usually the change in liquid in your recipe is slight enough that the change in the final product is not consequential.  If the difference in sugar is substantial, you may need to add more dry ingredient, cocoa or flour, or liquid.  But again, the change in the amount of sugar is usually not consequential.

And a Final Note