Types of Brownies

Fat against flour. A fudgy pan runs heavy on butter or oil and cocoa butter with very little flour and no leavener, so it sets dense and cuts into a slab. A cakey pan adds flour, baking powder or soda, and often milk, so it rises and holds an open crumb. Same ingredient list, different proportions.

Several small moves working on the same problem. Trading part of the butter for oil keeps the pan soft at room temperature, an extra egg yolk adds fat without more water, and a tablespoon of cornstarch softens the flour's protein. Brown sugar helps too, since it holds on to moisture the way white sugar does not.

It depends on the leavener. With no baking soda in the recipe, Dutch-process is the better pick: less acidic, rounder tasting, and ours carries 22-24% cocoa butter, which is where a lot of the fudginess comes from. If the recipe leans on baking soda to rise, it needs natural cocoa's acid to react, and swapping in Dutch will flatten it.

Yes, and the color is why people do. Black cocoa is ultra-Dutched, so it bakes near-black with little to no food coloring and tastes smooth and low in acid, closer to a sandwich cookie than to a dark chocolate bar. Most bakers split it with Dutch-process rather than using it alone, which keeps the chocolate flavor full while the pan still goes very dark.

That thin crust is dissolved sugar rising to the surface, so give the sugar every chance to dissolve. Beat the eggs and sugar until the mixture turns pale and ribbons off the whisk, and add the sugar to warm butter or warm melted chocolate rather than cold. Very alkaline batters fight it, which is why some black cocoa recipes add a pinch of cream of tartar.

The toothpick test misleads here. A clean toothpick means a fudgy pan is already past it. Pull them when the pick comes out with moist crumbs clinging to it and the edges have just started to pull away from the sides. The center keeps setting as it cools, so give the pan an hour before you cut.