Brownie
A Simple-Yet-Brilliant Hack for Better Boxed Brownies
Plus, a way to use up leftovers from your morning brew.
This article is a part of Chocolate Week—seven days of recipes and stories, all chocolate—presented by our friends at Guittard. A fifth-generation family business, Guittard has been crafting an array of chocolate offerings (like top-quality baking chips, cocoa powder, and baking bars) in San Francisco since 1868.
We know that adding coffee to anything chocolate will heighten and intensify those rich and, well, chocolatey flavors. A small amount of brewed coffee or espresso (or the powdered instant stuff) will make chocolate cakes, cookies, frostings, and other treats taste more like themselves, without contributing an overtly ‘coffee-ish’ flavor. It’s a baking trick we’ve relied on for years, which is why we were shocked to realize we’d missed a genius—and simple—opportunity to combine these magical ingredients: the humble boxed brownie mix.
As with so many of today’s food trends, this one has been gaining traction on TikTok. All it requires is that, when making brownies from a mix, you replace the water with brewed coffee or espresso. It doesn’t get easier than that—and, rather than sending it down the drain, the trick is a great way to repurpose any leftovers from your morning cup o’ Joe.
Many others on the app have posted about this trick over the past year, so it’s not exactly new (maybe you’ve already tried it yourself?), but its popularity appears to be on the rise. America’s Test Kitchen also backs up the method, noting that it will result in “better, more [chocolatey] brownies.”
Just keep in mind that, due to caffeine’s structure and high boiling point, it won’t “cook out” like alcohol does. So, if you add coffee to your baked goods, they will be caffeinated. In most cases, the amount of coffee will be small enough that the caffeine content in a single brownie will be negligible, but it’s something to consider if you’re especially concerned about caffeine intake. Of course, you could always swap out regular coffee for decaf—your brownies won’t know the difference.
Written by: Anabelle Doliner
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15 Comments
But be aware virtually all boxed brownie recipes prescribe over-baking, resulting in a cakey brownie.
Bake brownies in a square or round pan; don't double recipes into a rectangular pan, because there will be much more uneven cooking in the latter.
If you want that brownie texture that is neither cake nor fudge, use an instant read thermometer to bake until 190F (185F is OK if you want it to lean towards fudgier). Why baking recipes omit destination temperatures in this day and age is beyond comprehension.
You must remove brownies immediately from any glass baking dish (use a foil sling) because carryover cooking in glass is much higher than in metal.
Add coarse salt very lightly to finished product. But I personally do not care for that.
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