Brownies: Fudge or Cakey? Recipes for Both Camps

I love eggs (from my head down to my legs), but if you want a great brownie without the eggs, I know from experience that omitting the eggs from the fudgy brownie recipe results in one (still) delicious brownie. That was a total accident. I DID NOT intend to make an eggless brownie. I INTENDED to follow the recipe and, uh, include all of the ingredients.

But, my brain went “Poof!” for a moment. The pan was in the oven before I realized what I did. You know, that moment you see the eggs you were supposed to add to the batter sitting on the counter in front of you.

Still, take heart from this. If you haven’t been baking for long, know that pro or novice, mistakes still happen. In this case, it was total luck. The brownies were still fudgy, minus the eggs. Good to know in case I’m ever out of eggs (I don’t know how as I buy a ridiculous amount each time). But there you go.

Bake A Cakey Brownie

Everyone has a favorite brownie type. My husband says he prefers fudgy brownies, but he sure plowed through the cakey brownies I made. He finally admitted to being a fan. Not that he had to say anything. The brownie crumbs he left in his wake were pretty telling.

There are plenty of reasons why brownies are either cakey or fudgy and you can learn all about the differences by following that link. Need the Cliff Notes version? The Kitchn had this to say about cakey brownies, they “…have a lighter, airier texture due to a lower amount of fat, more flour, and the addition of baking powder for leavening.”

Like Bon Appetit says, “If you’re into cakey brownies, go for a recipe that is reminiscent of, well, cake: For example, if your instructions include the act of creaming together butter and sugar, says senior associate food editor Alison Roman, you’re probably going to be making a cake-like brownie. Which is great, if you’re into that. If you prefer fudgy brownies, says associate food editor Claire Saffitz, look for a recipe that has a higher chocolate and butter-to-dry ingredient ratio.”

Bottom-line: A fudgy brownie has less flour and more fat. A cakey brownie has more flour and baking powder. Makes sense. Baking powder is a leavener and will help the brownies rise.

My Favorite Cakey Brownies Ever, Ever, Ever

But these brownies…these are my favorite. I have zero problem passing by a pan of fudgy brownies. But these? I’ll eat one for breakfast and not think twice about it. Then, I’ll maybe even have one later in the day with a cup of decaf because OMG they were made to accompany a cup of coffee. Ha. One. Who am I kidding?

Cakey Brownie with Frosting

I actually have the clipping from one of the old Quick Cooking magazines. I hadn't made it in years, but in October of 2020, I had such a taste for frosted brownies. I dug it up. I JUST misplaced it, like I had it in my TWO DAYS AGO, I set it…somewhere…so thank goodness I had already figured out a year ago that it was in the cookbook Taste of Home Winning Recipes. I remembered the blurb from the top of the clipping. Isn't that silly? Of all the things to remember.

The text reads that it should make "2 dozen brownies." If you cut them out all even, that's what you will get. We don't do that. We kind of dig in and cut ridiculous sizes of all kinds. But, if you were bringing them somewhere, that's the amount "they" consider a serving.

Tip: Don't slice brownies until you go to eat them, to keep them from getting dry.

This recipe is slightly adapted (I add salt to the frosting). See? Super slightly adapted. A minimal change.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Servings 1 13 x 9 Pan

Equipment

• 13 x 9 pan

Ingredients

  

For the Brownies:

• 1 Cup PLUS 3 Tablespoons Butter, Cubed
• 3/4 Cup Baking Cocoa
• 4 Large Eggs
• 2 Cups Sugar
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• 1 1/2 Cups Flour
• 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
• 1 teaspoon Salt

For the Frosting:

• 6 Tablespoons Butter, Softened
• 2 2/3 Cup Powdered Sugar
• 1/2 Cup Baking Cocoa
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• 1/4 to 1/3 Cup Milk to achieve desired consistency.
• 1 pinch Salt optional (I always add a pinch of salt to frosting)

Instructions

 

To Make the Brownies:

• 350* oven. Grease a 13 x 9 pan (Pam for Baking with Flour or Baker's Joy work well).
• Melt butter and stir in cocoa. Let cool while you proceed with the recipe.
• In a large bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, and the vanilla extract.
• In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and the salt. Slowly add to the creamed mixture.
• Stir in the chocolate mixture and mix until only a few streaks of flour remain. Go slowly, combing the streaks in, and then stop! You don't want to overmix your brownie batter.
• Spread in your prepared pan. Bake 25-28 minutes or until a toothpick near the center comes out clean (NOT a mushy, gushy mess). DO NOT test the center for zero crumbs or you will overbake your brownies. A center test should reveal a couple of dampened crumbs. Closer to the center should be clean.
• Cool on a wire rack.

To Make the Frosting:

• Using an electric mixer, a hand mixer, or a spoon; cream the butter, powdered sugar, cocoa, and the vanilla extract.
• Pour the full amount of possible milk needed in the measuring cup, but then ONLY stir in the smaller amount (1/4 cup) to make sure you don't add more than you actually need. You want the frosting to be a thicker consistency, yet still spreadable. Add more milk as needed. You should not need more than the full amount of milk.
• Let them cool completely before eating, as the flavor develops ("best NOT warm" as my cookbook notes say from October 12, 2020, but you do you. Give it a try, and see what you think).

Keyword Brownies, Frostings and Glazes

Fudgy Brownie Recipe Made Using Oil

Out of butter again? I hate when I do that. Using oil, over butter, means no melting and cooling of chocolate either. It’s great for those times you lack butter or are short on time. After all, fudgy brownies use more butter (or fat) over flour. Those dry ingredients zap the fudginess right out of there.

Martha Stewart shares, “The amount of sugar and eggs does not change whether you’re going fudgy or cakey.”

It’s all about the fats and the method for the best fudgy brownies or, really, any brownie. You don’t want to mix with a heavy hand if you want a fudge-like texture. Cakey brownies do in part rely on how you cream them—and as we all know, overbeating a cake will make it flat and tough. Ew, David.

Fudgy brownies appear more often than my frosted brownies because I like having one snack I can whip up fast and that will pack into a lunchbox for the kiddos the next day without a ton of mess. I rely on this super speedy recipe to perk up the fam on down days. Walking into the door and smelling chocolate goodness is a surefire way to cheer up anyone.

Fast Homemade Fudgy Brownies with Oil

Fudgy Brownies with Oil

This recipe is not mine. I copied it from…I don't know where! I've searched and searched through cooking mags and cookbooks and can't find where I found it (remember, I write in my cookbooks, so I can see if it's The One). It's driving me up the wall. It has to be here somewhere! I didn't think I found it from a library book, but maybe I did. If YOU have this recipe too, and know the source, PLEASE let me know. It's a pet peeve of mine to hop on a food site and then see that the author pretends all the things are their creation. I really hate that. This ISN'T my invention. I'm just a big fan.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Equipment

• 9-inch Square Baking Pan

Ingredients

  

• 1/2 Cup Vegetable Oil (or Canola Oil)
• 1 Cup Sugar
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• 2 Large Eggs
• 1/4 teaspoon Baking Powder
• 1/3 Cup Cocoa Powder
• 1/4 teaspoon Salt
• 1/2 Cup Flour

Instructions

 

• 350*. Grease a 9" square baking pan and set aside.
• Mix oil and sugar until combined.
• Add eggs and vanilla. Combine.
• Mix all dry ingredients in a separate bowl.
• Stir dry ingredients into the oil/sugar mixture.
• Pour into greased 9 x 9 square pan.
• Bake for 20 minutes or until sides just starts to pull away from the pan.
• Cool completely before slicing.
• Double and bake in 13 x 9 pan. FYI: You will get less fudgy brownies due to the pan size.

Keyword Brownies

Fancy Fudgy Brownies (with Butter and Two Kinds of Chocolate)

These brownies take a little longer to throw together than the oil-based fudgy brownies above. That’s because these brownies have you melt chocolate and butter together over a double boiler (or a pot with a glass bowl over the water, not touching the water). But, it also includes cocoa powder AND melted chocolate so you get a better dose of chocolate than melted chocolate can provide alone.

Even so, it is still a pantry staple kind of brownie recipe. This one does call for an 8″ square pan. My aluminum pan is a 9-inch, so I used a glass baking pan. I believe that’s why the oven temperature is set at 325* (with a longer baking time) to allow for the difference in material. Eh, I did a little Googling beforehand. I did skip the parchment paper-lining of the pan as indicated in the original recipe. I greased the baking dish and left it at that. We aren’t going to turn the brownies out, as they are going to be stored in the pan anyway.

Do let these brownies cool to room temperature before you did in. The chocolate needs time to develop. They just taste better that way. Trust me. Recipes inside Bake from Scratch magazine are always amazing. Always. I used to pick up the magazine from the rack back in Indiana. It’s not in the stores where I am in Pennsylvania. I missed it so much, I became a subscriber. Bake from Scratch is fancy, a step (or three) above the usual, but still accessible.

Fudgy Brownie Recipe Using Butter

"Butter makes it better," says my mom. While it's hard to beat the other fudgy brownie recipe (using oil), these are so good with only a little more foofing. You'll have to melt the butter and chocolate together and work on the recipe in parts.

If you skip lining the pan with parchment paper (like I did), note that you will need to either remove the brownies from the oven a minute or two before they are done (since they will keep baking as they cool in the pan) or try to flip them out of the pan for cooling purposes, before putting them back in the pan for storage (like I did).

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Equipment

• 8-inch Baking Pan

Ingredients

  

• 1 Cup (8 Ounces) 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate, Chopped
• ¾ Cup Butter, Cubed
• 1 Cup Sugar
• ¾ Cup Dark Brown Sugar, Packed You can use light brown sugar, but it won't be the same.
• 1¼ Cups Flour
• 3 Tablespoons Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
• ¾ teaspoon Salt
• ¾ teaspoon Instant Espresso Powder
• 4 Large Eggs Room Temperature and Lightly beaten
• 2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract

Instructions

 

• 325* oven. Grease an 8" baking pan and set aside. (Note: the original recipe says to line the pan with parchment paper. Your call. I did not).
• Melt chocolate and butter in the top of a double boiler and stir to combine. I use a bowl that sits above the pot of simmering water (the water DOES NOT touch the bowl).
• Turn off the heat. Add the granulated and the dark brown sugar to the melted chocolate and butter mixture. It won't be smooth.
• Remove from the heat and let cool 3-5 minutes (adding eggs to the hot mixture would cause thin white strings of egg in your finished product, since the heat would cook the egg white).
• Meanwhile, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, salt, and espresso powder.
• Slowly add the eggs to the chocolate and sugar mixture. I set the eggs in a liquid measuring cup, beat them, then drizzled them into the mixture, while stirring with my other hand.
• Add in vanilla extract.
• Fold in flour mixture to the chocolate and sugar mixture JUST until combined. When you see a couple of floury streaks, tread slowly: You are almost done mixing!
• Spread batter into the greased pan.
• Bake for 50-55 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out with a few crumbs. Leave, cooling, in the pan for 15 minutes. If you used parchment paper, remove the brownies from the pan, cool completely on a wire rack, and then store in the refrigerator for up to 6 days.

Keyword Brownies

Brownies Done Right

When I was a kid, and I know you’ve heard this story before, but, that’s what friends do, right? Share the same stories over and over, and pretend it’s the first time they’ve heard it or at least pretend not to mind hearing it yet again?

Since you are here and baking and into cookbooks like I am, we are most certainly friends.

My grandma taught me how to play Money Bunco (“once you put a penny in…”), Concentration (the card game, starting out with the royal cards to match when I was REALLY little), and the value of a good old classic TV show (though she did enjoy watching South Park and The X-Files back in the late 1990s with me). Anyway. My grandma baked box mix brownies a lot. Gross, I know. But, it was “the thing to do” then. I think she over-mixed and over-baked them. Her brownies were hard as a rock. The edges were inedible. My dad used to make jokes about using them to pave the driveway. I still ate them because: Frosting. She still frosted them. Hey, it was likely from a can too, but to my immature and sugar-obsessed palette—it was good.

Fast forward quite a bit and…I wasn’t all that into brownies as an adult. I never made them. It wasn’t until I was married that I delved into brownie baking. Now, there are entire cookbooks devoted to brownies. Who knew they could be so good, soft, and inexpensive (a very important factor when we were young)?

I know that’s not just me.

Brownies are the same way. There’s a type of brownie for everyone. What’s yours? What’s your go-to brownie when you are having “one of those days?” Please, let me know. I love to talk food!

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