The Recipe with Kenji and Deb - Brownies (and something just as iconic, with Kelsey McKinney)

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

Brownies are a diabolical(ly) good cross between cake and cookie. They taste sinfully rich and decadent, but they’re an angel in the kitchen (one bow recipe alertl!) and they make your house smell like heaven. Plus, we hear Deb and Kenji’s recommendations for the best snacks for gossiping or watching reality TV.Recipes: Glossy Fudge Brownies Recipe (Serious Eats) Olive Oil Brownies (Smitten Kitchen) My Favorite Brownies (Smitten Kitchen) Best Cocoa Brownies (Smitten Kitchen) Blackout Brownie Waffle Sundae (Smitten Kitchen Every Day) Brownie Ice Cream Sandwiches (Smitten Kitchen) Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Hey, podcast listeners. I'm Chris Morocco, food director of Bon Appetit and Epicurious and host of the Dinner SOS podcast. Every week on Dinner SOS, my Test Kitchen colleagues and I help listeners figure out what they should be cooking right now. And this winter, we're helping you embrace all things cozy cooking, letting you join the BA Bake Club, and getting back to basics with simple strategies to level up your home cooking.

So don't miss out. Listen to and follow DinnerSOS wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have your own kitchen question, email us at dinnerSOS at bonappetit.com. Happy cooking. Kenji, do you like brownies? Brownies are fine. I mean, I'm eating a brownie as we speak right now. Oh, you are?

Is it like a recipe I might have heard of? These are Deb's favorite brownies I'm eating right now. And what do you think? They're great. I made them with my kids yesterday. They were real easy. Yes. It's fun to melt chocolate.

Honestly, as someone who doesn't really make dessert that often, the four times I've made them in my life, I'm always like, oh, brownies are actually real easy and like a crowd pleaser and real good. Exactly. And mine are one bowl, hand whisked, no sifting, no egg separation. I think I originally called them

the 40 minute nap time brownies because that's how long my toddler was willing to sleep, like, at best. And so I wanted something where I could feel like the time had been well used. Mm-hmm. But yeah, basically that's usually when it happened. Yeah, well, I picked up my kids. We had an hour before we had to leave for my daughter's violin lesson, and we made and cooked the brownies and had them, we had an hour before we had to leave for my daughter's violin lesson,

and we made and cooked the brownies and had them out cooling within an hour. That sounds amazing. I would like to come home to that aroma, just once. I would like to come home to somebody else having made the brownies just once. The other great thing about brownies is that one tray of brownies,

like even an eight by eight tray of brownies is like an absurd amount for a family to eat. I agree. And so you always have, like, you always have enough to give to your neighbors. Yeah, every time you make brownies, it's like you're also making friends. Aw, that's so sweet, Kentie. Are you trying to make friends? Are you sure you want to make friends? Because those friends are like, hey, could you bring those brownies over that you made last time?

And you're gonna be like, ugh, I don't get to make anything else. I'm too good at making brownies. From PRX's Radiotopia, this is The Recipe with Kenji and Deb. Where we help you discover your own perfect recipes. Kenji is the author of The Food Lab, and The Walk, and a columnist for The New York Times. And Deb is the creator of Smitten Kitchen. She's also the author of three best-selling cookbooks.

We've been professional recipe developers for nearly two decades, and we've got the same basic goal, to make recipes that work for you and to make you excited to get into the kitchen. But we've got really different approaches, and on this show, we'll cook and talk about each other's recipes, comparing notes to see what we can learn from each other. This week, we're talking about...

Brownies. That's next on The Re recipe, so stick around. Keji, do you think brownies should be eaten warm, room temperature, like fridge cold or freezer cold? So I already know you have a real, real controversial answer for this. You eat them out of the fridge, right? I love fridge cold brownies. I think they are the perfect texture. You get like heavy on the chew. They're not too warm.

You don't get any like oily effect. What do you like? I like brownies either warm. All those things that experts tell you you're not supposed to eat warm, you know, like sourdough bread or like a baguette or brownies or apple pie, like all those things are better warm. Apple pie should be warm. Yeah, for sure. No, I think they're all real good when they first come out of the oven.

Like I like brownies that are still warm from the oven, but I think they're also good next day at room temperature. They're fine out of the fridge too, is just why I would never choose to put a brownie in the fridge. I would. But I think, I feel like baked goods especially, they settle as they cool, where like when it comes out of the oven, it might be a little puffier and steamier, and when it settles into itself with age, are we talking about brownies anymore?

It becomes better. It's like a better, more true version of itself where you can taste it. But so you like them warm. I feel like most people like them warm. Most people picture like their perfect brownie and it's a warm, freshly baked square. And it has like a scoop of melting ice cream.

Vanilla ice cream on top, yeah. Well, that is the way that we serve brownies at Worst Hall at my restaurant in San Mateo. We use Stella Parks' brownie recipe. It's on the menu as Stella's brownie and it's served warm. So the slight like it's we make it in a big slab like and we make it in sheet trays and then you get a big slab of brownie served warm like a salted caramel drizzle vanilla ice cream and some whipped cream. I think that's the best way to eat a brownie. See I want all of those things separate, but I'm very strange about these. I want to taste them each. It's not about the mixing. It's just that I like salted caramel and I like ice cream and I want

to taste them all. And I want the middle together where I don't get to taste like how special each one is. That said, I do have a salted caramel brownie recipe on Spitten Kitchen, but what you do is you actually make the salted caramel, you freeze it, you break. I think that when we cut it into like chunks and then you stir that into the batter and that gives you those melty gooey pieces. That sounds real good. I like it like where it's pocketed and you have pockets of salted caramel. Let's talk about exactly what a brownie is before we get into our recipes. Is a brownie a cake? Is it a cookie? Is it fudge? Yeah, I mean, a brownie is essentially an un, like a real dense chocolate cake, right?

Because it's got, it's a brownie recipe is real simple. It'll be butter, chocolate of some form, some minimal amount of flour, eggs, and sugar, right? So you're not going to have any baking powder. Typically, you want a baking powder or baking soda in a brownie, which I think are the things that really define a cake, a cake-like texture. But it has some flour in it, so it's not quite a fudge either. But it's somewhere in between fudge and a cake. It is a uniquely American thing. It was invented in 1893 in the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago, where it is still served to this day. So the brownie was made with walnuts and an apricot glaze. And I'm like, interesting.

I don't think I would hate it, but it's not what I picture when I picture a brownie. It's also interesting that walnuts were in the original recipe, because I feel like walnuts are still a controversial addition a brownie. It's also interesting that, that walnuts were in the original recipe because I feel like walnuts are still a controversial addition to brownies. So controversial. Kenji, do you put nuts in your brownies? Of the four times I've made brownies in my life, I've probably put nuts in half the time and half the time not.

When I eat a brownie, I am delighted when I find a nut in there, but I'm also not disappointed not to find nuts. Interesting. I actually don't mind nuts and baked goods, but I've never felt that brownies needed them. I actually really like them in something crunchier, like a chocolate chip cookie, something with like a crispy, chewy thing, where I feel like it merges and it makes the crisp taste more interesting. For brownies, I like the edge, I like the top,

I like the fudgy center. I think of a brownie as like halfway between a cake and a cookie, but I definitely, it has to be more fudgy than cakey for me. I feel like whenever a brownie goes wrong, it's usually too cakey. It's too whipped. It's too airy. Maybe there's some leavening in it. There is something making it too fluffy, and I don't want them fluffy.

I really do think of them as like a blondie texture, you know, like something dense. Wait, you think of a brownie as a blondie texture, isn't it the other way around? Well blondies are kind of brownie, yeah, something like that, but something where you're talking about like a dense, chewy, good edges thing. And what about the top of a brownie? What do you want the top of a brownie? Because I feel like that's also one of the defining characteristics of a brownie versus a cake, because a cake has a sort of spongy open top, right? Whereas a brownie should have like a paper thin,

like an eggshell thin, shiny, ideally shiny. Oftentimes it'll be kind of matte, but it'll have like a little crust on the top. A little like glossy sort of flaky top. I think it can be nice. Not all of my brownie recipes reliably deliver that. Sometimes I found that the ones that did so more were more whipped.

Like if you were using an electric mixer, but you also got a fluffier crumb that was slightly more cake-like. And so I didn't really wanna go in that direction. Like I understood how to get it, but I didn't want it enough. I wanted the center texture to be, it compromised for me what I wanted in the center texture. But that said, when I see that glossy top brownie, like I'm like, ooh, it looks like a brownie. I want it.

Yeah. When I was at Cooks Illustrated sometime in the mid 2000s, my roommate at the time, Yvonne Ruperti, who she was working wow. She was working on a brownie recipe. Then also Stella Parks later at Serious Seats was working on a brownie recipe. Her recipe appears in her book, Brave Tart. What Yvonne found at Cooks Illustrated was that, first of all, the type of sugar makes a big difference. Using white sugar is going to give you

a much smoother top than if you use brown sugar. I think it's because brown sugar is more hygroscopic, which means that it pulls in moisture from the atmosphere and so the top of the brownie doesn't dry out properly if you use something like brown sugar. So white sugar is real important. And then the other real important part, and this is the thing that Stella stresses a lot

in her recipe, is making sure that the sugar is completely dissolved in the batter. So if you're making your batter, you wanna add the sugar to the eggs and kind of beat them until the eggs are kind of ribbony, you know, the same way that if you're making your batter, you want to add the sugar to the eggs and kind of beat them until the eggs are kind of ribbony, you know, the same way that you're if you're making a custard where the sugar is completely dissolved in there. And when you do that, the sugar kind of rises to the top and creates that sheen as opposed to if the sugar is added directly to the dry ingredients where you get more sort of a matte top. But I'm wondering if like with my favorite brownies, you melt the chocolate and the butter together and then you add the sugar and you whisk it in. I'm wondering if, because I'm not super into the texture

you get from electric whipping eggs, like that aeration, I'm not that keen on it, but I am wondering now. Now I kind of want to play around and see if I like then maybe wait five minutes for the sugar to dissolve in the warm butter more so so it's not grainy anyway. Like give it five or ten minutes and then continue the recipe. Could I get that more of a crackly top? So there's a famous New York Times chocolate chip cookie recipe and my chocolate chip cookie recipe actually also is well for serious eats. You make the dough and then you let it sit overnight.

So that, well, there's a few things that happen. There's like enzymes that go into the flour and cut it into smaller pieces so that you get a little bit more, like a deeper flavor, more browning. But also you get the sugar dissolves better and you get more hydrate, the flour hydrates better. So it improves the texture and the flavor.

This is actually a trick that works for virtually any cookie dough, any chocolate chip cookie dough. If you let it rest overnight. But I wonder if you did the same thing, make a brownie batter and let it rest overnight. A lot of the things that seem like they would make brownies better often doesn't.

Like for example, I am not that keen on brown sugar in them. I love brown sugar in so many baked goods, but I didn't feel like it added to brownies when I made them. The other thing is I've played around with higher cocoa proportions, where you swap some of the flour for the equal weight in cocoa. And I'm thinking I'm gonna get a fudgier brownie

and maybe you do, but I also feel like the brownie gets a little more matte. Anyway, I wasn't getting what I wanted from these swaps, cause the logical thing would be like, oh, let's just get rid of the flour and use cocoa powder or whatever. But it just, it wasn't, or even just a swap. Half I played with it,

I ended up with these kind of matte, dull surfaces. And I didn't, I didn't like it as much. So I actually made two different brownie recipes. One of them was yours, that the famous favorite brownies. And then the other one is also from your site. It was Alice Medridge's version, which is- Good, I'm glad you mentioned that. Cause that's like reader's favorite.

So let me talk through your recipe first. So you take chocolate and butter and you melt it in a double boiler in a bowl. And then to that you add sugar and vanilla. And then you beat in your eggs one at a time. And we can get back to that because I want to know why you have to beat the eggs in one at a time. And then you add some flour and then you bake it all. Alice Medridge's recipe that you've adapted on your site is similar, but it uses cocoa powder as opposed to chocolate.

Can you tell me what the two different things are going to do in your brownies, cocoa powder versus chocolate? Because chocolate is basically what cocoa powder that's also had, that also has some of the cocoa butter in it, is that right? And it's just been properly sort of conched and tempered. So Alice Measuring, her brownie recipes, I feel like world or at least internet famous, cookbook famous for best cocoa brownies. And again, they're not my, or brownie,

they're not the brownie I grew up with that tastes like the correct brownie to me, but they are beloved and I would say Spitting Kitchen readers are pretty evenly divided on whether they prefer the best cocoa brownies or what I call my favorite brownies. But what I think she does something very, very interesting with it where she,

instead of using chocolate, bar chocolate that has the cocoa butter in it and the coconut oil in it, I'm not saying it right. Cocoa butter, the cocoa fat. Thank you. Yeah. Exactly. So she says that by using cocoa powder and then using butter you're basically just replacing, you're getting a better flavor. You get to use basically she's replacing the fat that would be in the bar chocolate with butter and like who would not be happy about that. So it's a more butter heavy recipe and again, it's kind of cool. You only have to use dry chocolate. I don't get a very glossy top when I make them, but I do see other people on the internet who have made them, they get a more glossy top. It's a very dense, again, deliciously buttery brownie. And there's no way you would be unhappy if

you made these like immediately. I think I probably adapt them to be one bowl and I probably do my own like fussy things with them you know just kind of keep it simple but it's definitely a very dense. I would say it's very chewy it's a very fudgy brownie more than chewy and again it's just super buttery and you get a great chocolate flavor from just cocoa powder especially if you're using like quote unquote good cocoa powder. My guess is because you powder is alkalized, whereas bar chocolate is not. And so with a bar chocolate, you get sort of more of the acidic and fruity notes of chocolate as opposed to cocoa powder, which gives you sort of a deeper, like the base

flavors of chocolate. So I think, I don't know, at least from my taste, I find that your brownies, the ones made with real chocolate, and I use Giordeli for both of them, so I use the same product for both of them, so I use the same product for both of them. But one of yours was made with Giordale 100% bars, and Alice's I made with the Giordale Alkalized Cocoa Powder. I find that yours have a sort of more of the sort of fruitier, brighter flavors. Fruity?

No, that's like my nightmare in a brownie. I guess I don't mean fruity, but you know how chocolate can have notes of cherry or notes of, you know, those brighter notes that people who write about chocolate talk about. So you probably bake them like right next to each other within a day. I only had one pan, so I did them one after the other. Is my description of the texture differences accurate to what you found? It is, yeah. And I also wonder how much of that has to do with the sort of the ratio of ingredients

versus the pH. Because cocoa powder and bar chocolate have different pHs, like very different pHs. Did you use a Dutch co... I'm forgetting what she asked for in the recipe. Does she ask for a Dutch cocoa powder? She says you can do natural or Dutch. I generally prefer it in Dutch process. So use basically, all the European brands are Dutch process and I find it to have like a nuttier

or rich chocolate flavor that I prefer. I also feel that within brownie recipes themselves, it is far more common to have a brownie recipe that starts with bitter, sweet or baking chocolate, some sort of 72% thing. You mean versus 100%? Yeah, versus 100%, which is what we call unsweetened chocolate. And that's kind of a uniquely American product. I don't really hear much about finding unsweetened chocolate. In Europe, I've heard from European reviews, they're not finding it.

Maybe they get 98% or 90, you know, but it's not, it's not the same. I haven't tested them side by side, but when I make brownies with a bittersweet chocolate, I'm not saying it's not a good brownie, and I'm not saying I'm not going to eat that brownie and enjoy it, but it never for me gets the chocolate intensity, the gravitas, the nuttiness,

the depth of chocolate. I'm going, I'm like, I really feel strongly about this. I feel like I never get the chocolate richness that I want from bittersweet chocolate that I do from actually unsweetened chocolate. And that's part of the reason. And with my favorite brownies, you start with unsweetened chocolate. For me, it's just, I feel like you get so much impact for so many fewer ounces of chocolate.

I feel like if I'm using something like a bittersweet bar, I have to use a lot of ounces of it and it's still not as deep. And here I'm using- You use three ounces in your- Three ounces. And I think in the olive oil brownie, which is really very similar, but like adapted for olive oil, I use four ounces. But again, it's a very small amount and it's enough to make the whole pan fudgy.

So there's an impact to it that I really like. You know what's funny? You mentioned your olive oil. I did not make your olive oil brownies, but over Thanksgiving we were at my sister's place in Colorado and my mom had a box of brownie mix. We had all gone out for the day. She stayed behind and when we got back home, she had made these brownies and she said that she made a huge mistake and that she accidentally used extra virgin olive oil instead of regular oil in the brownie mix. But we all tasted them and they tasted real good.

I like it. Olive oil is a real good flavor in brownies. I think chocolate and olive oil go so well together. I've played around with it in cakes. I have a chocolate olive oil spread in my Keepers cookbook. I really like what they're doing together. Olive oil on chocolate ice cream is really good. It's so good.

A little bit of salt. It's different, but they go're doing together. Olive oil on chocolate ice cream is really good. It's so good. A little bit of salt. Like it's different, but they go really well together. Again, it may not be like that classic brownie flavor, but you know, it's not meant to replace your favorite brownies, but I think if dairy is an issue, or you're just looking for like a more nuanced flavor profile, I think they go really nicely together. We're going to talk more about brownies coming up after the break on the recipe with Kenji

and Deb. Deb, so when you buy a boxed brownie, the mix almost always asks you to, you know, you add egg and you add oil to it. Brownie recipes that you're making from scratch, some of them are going to use butter, some of them use oil, some use a mix. Can you talk to me about what oil versus butter is going to do in a brownie? In general, I know that oil, I have not played around with boxed brownies nearly as much. I came from an ingredients house and we made things from scratch. And now everyone has to suffer because of it.

Everybody on the internet, everyone who listens to this podcast has to go find unsweetened chocolate because of the way I was raised. But in general, oil-based cakes are actually, they taste and often feel more moist to the touch. I think it has to do with the fact that like butter's kind of solid and oil is obviously,

obviously butter can liquefy, but at room temperature and cold, it's solid and oil and also butter has added water in it and oil does not, obviously. So I find that when you make a cake with oil, it is generally softer and it feels more moist and it actually feels more moist after a few days. So I would assume in brownies it does something similar, but you don't get the wonderful chocolate.

You don't get the butter flavor. But I've definitely read that people like to, when they're trying to doctor up, make a boxed brownie mix tastes better. Maybe they replace the water with milk or coffee or they use melted butter instead of oil, or they might add extra salt or a teaspoon of good vanilla extract

or like some espresso powder. Like there's so many ways you can play around with them. And I also feel like if you grew up with boxed brownie mixes, like that's the brownie. And we talk about this a lot, like your homing device, your that's the brownie that tastes correct to you. And when I'm like, no, my favorite brownies are my favorite, it's because I didn't grow up with them. Like it's a different flavor profile. I haven't made, again, I should have made Stella's and I really meant to before this,

but I feel like they look like that kind of perfect packaged brownie. Yes. They're real dark looking. They got a real shiny crust on top. I mean, that's the real thing is that they get like a real nice shiny crust. It's definitely a much more involved recipe though. So her recipe, there's a few tricks. So first of all, you start by browning the butter. She says the most important step for getting that sort of glossy top is you take the eggs, it's six eggs, and the sugar, and you beat them until they are ribbony, you know, like completely fluffy and ribbony. But you know, that said, when you when you combine everything and when you actually bake it all together, the brownies themselves are not fluffy or

cakey at all. They actually kind of collapse, you know, so they're they are real dense and fudgy, like among them among the sort of densest fudgiest brownies I've had. But that could also just be, you know, the proportion of the ingredients. I think it's I think it's a lot of butter in there compared to other ingredients compared to other brownie recipes. So the other trick that Stella does, she combines her chocolate with some powdered espresso, which is something that you see a lot in chocolate recipes. Yeah, do you want to talk a little bit about what that does and why you'd want to do that? I feel like it's very 1990s. I feel like every chocolate recipe and everybody who drinks coffee will tell you

that it does not make it taste like coffee. That it just deepens the chocolate flavor. And I think for many people, this is the truth. I will say that I always do taste the espresso in the brownie and I love coffee and chocolate and I love chocolate coffee caves. I don't generally need my brownies to taste coffee-ish. So again, theoretically, you're not supposed to taste the espresso in it or the espresso powder,

but I always do a little bit. And I think if you like that flavor profile, you'll think it's perfect. And if it's not your thing in general, they're very like amenable together, like where it can kind of it can increase the bitter, nutty depth of the chocolate, which is something we want. I also wonder if you know, part of the reason why it was used so much in the 90s and maybe is not as necessary now is that we actually have better chocolate now than we did in the 90s. There's so much proliferation of real good chocolate and chocolates that have these sort of really naturally complex flavors, chocolates that aren't roasted too dark in the same way

that like, you know, like third wave coffee is not roasted too dark so you can taste the brighter flavors in it. So I think some of it, some of that complexity that we're adding is that we, that you wanted to add in the nineties is just because you were using like your, you know, your baker's chocolate from the supermarket, which does not have a particularly complex flavor. And so adding some espresso powder to it does give it a little bit of depth. Whereas now, if you're using a real high quality chocolate, especially if you're using a chocolate bar, or real good cocoa, like it's just real good on its own, you know?

This is just my theory. No, I completely agree with you. And when I think of the espresso powder, I always think of Ina Garten's Outrageous Brownies, which were, I don't know what year they're about, maybe it's 2000, maybe it was 1998, I'm not positive. But they were for a very long time considered like the best fancy brownie. Yeah, I'm looking it up now. It's three tablespoons of instant coffee.

Like it's quite coffee. It's a lot. She's also using a pound of butter. This is a large recipe. She's making it, cause you know, she comes from a catering background. Oh, she's doing it in a 12 by 18. So it's all relative.

But I remember making them and finding them to be very strong in the coffee flavor, which is great if you want it. But I'm with you that I really just like the pure taste of chocolate. I feel like I get that the most from unsweetened chocolate. I do put a little vanilla in because I feel like it gives it a little bit of fragrance.

But I don't know that if I left the vanilla out, you would be like, this brownie is missing something. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. I do like the vanilla in there. And I actually, when I left the vanilla out, you would be like this brownie's missing something. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. I do like the vanilla in there. And I actually, when I made your brownies, I put double the vanilla. We measure vanilla with our hearts, don't we?

I mean, who's pulling out a measuring spoon to measure vanilla? That's not the way I was raised. So I noticed Stella, there's something cool in her recipe where she, so she tells you to not eat them warm if you can bear it. She says you're gonna bake them for 30 minutes and then she tells you to not eat them warm if you can bear it. She says, you're gonna bake them for 30 minutes and then she encourages you to cool them to room temperature

to allow their crumb to set. And I think she describes in the article above that it's cruel to wait, but letting the brownies cool for at least 30 minutes, it helps them set. She says that this brownie can seem a little cakey while puffed and warm, but their fudginess develops as they settle in.

They collapse. Exactly, that's where you start getting that crinkle too. Because the crinkle was initially, that glossy crinkly top was initially, that was initially the shape of the brownie. And at some point. Right, it was puffed out. It was puffed out with the balloon. Exactly, and then the flakiness remains and it's.

So at my restaurant, we make the sheet tray of brownies. You, we let them cool completely. We cut them and then we reheat them. Let's see that about a brownie too. Yeah. If you're going to eat your brownies warm, reheating them is probably the best way to eat them warm. All right.

So I, I think we, we know that there's no, I feel strongly that there's no leavener in brownies. Eggs are in a way are a leavener. Yes, but that's about how much you whip them because I barely whip mine and so mine are not adding a lot of aeration but something like Estella's recipe or ones where you beat it with an electric mixer for a while, you're gonna get more of that. How do you feel about frosting on brownies? That's a question I've never even considered. Is that a common thing to put frosting on brownies? I would not want to put frosting on brownies.

I feel like you'd be losing that top crisp layer. It feels all wrong to me, but it's definitely, I feel like this might be more of a cafeteria, maybe a coffee shop thing. I'm not even sure, but I feel like some people grew up with frosted brownies. To me, it feels all wrong. I generally feel like if you see frosting,

it's there to cover up like a very inferior brownie. Yeah. It's not covering up a good brownie because if it was a good brownie, you wouldn't cover it with anything. I think, and something, you know, and frosting is even sweeter than a brownie. So adding something that's even sweeter than the brownie

to something that's already so dense and sweet just feels off to me. You know, it's like if I'm gonna add something to brownie, I want it to be mildly sweetened whipped cream or something salty like caramel or pretzel chips. Perhaps my cream cheese marbled brownies that are on the website. Perhaps a swirl of savory cream cheese or ice cream,

you know, ice cream which is not super sweet compared to a brownie. Like exactly. No, but I feel like the salted caramel, it needs to provide an obvious contrast. And to me, you've put two competing chocolate vehicles on each other that don't improve each other. Like it doesn't bring out the best in either

that makes the frosting taste too sweet and it makes the brownie taste dull. But again, if you think I'm wrong and you're listening out there, you can tell me. Oh, pretzels. We had pretzels to Stella's brownie also Oh, yeah, no, I'm all for that All right. We talked about nuts or no nuts. I think I'm you're you're okay with them I'm yeah, but I would take pretzels over any kind of nut. I like the French brownie. I really do

I want it to have like no oily feel to it. If that makes sense. I just want it to have like no oily feel to it if that makes sense. I just want it to be like Fudgy there are certain brownies that you can even freeze for the correct texture But in general most of them just get too hard, especially the fudgy ones Kenji, would you make brownies healthier by adding like black beans to them or like? hummus no, I mean I I am of the mind that you know unless you are No, I mean, I am of the mind that, you know, unless you are really like trying to make a diet that purely consists of brownies, like there's no point in... I don't think you should do add ingredients to like hide ingredients and other things just to make them a little bit healthier, especially if it's going to add work to your

plate. If it makes it taste better, sure. I just feel like it's not, it's not better. And you know, if you have a dietary thing, that's fine. I did do an olive oil brownie recipe, but I did it because I love olive oil with chocolate. I did it because to me it was a value add and not like a takeaway, but it also suits people who can't have dairy. So it's kind of a win-win. But I generally feel like I would rather have a smaller brownie

or half a brownie or brownies less often than I would like to have a bad brownie. Yeah, brownies less often is the thing, I think. I just want to, but if I want it, I want to have a good one so I can get it out of my system and not leave myself yearning for the brownie I wished I'd had. Well, adding beans to it might help get it out of your system faster.

I was waiting, I walked into it. Stormed into it, really. Today we have a listener question from Kelsey McKinney, who just ended an amazing run as the host of our Radiotopia sister podcast, Normal Gossip. She's now on tour with her new book, You Didn't Hear This From Me, Mostly True Notes on Gossip. Debra, the question is, how do you feel about gossip? Are you a gossip or are you no fun? I am pro-gossip. If you come up to me and you're like, I shouldn't be saying this, I'm like, what?

I get so excited. I jump like two steps. You can't tell anyone. I don't know if I should say this. I get so excited. I jump like two steps. You can't tell anyone. I don't know if I should say this. I get so excited. I even have this thing where I, if you're coming over for dinner, like if we're friends enough that I can say this,

if you're coming over for dinner and you ask me what you can bring, I will probably tell you you cannot bring food, but I want you to bring me like the fattest, juiciest, most inappropriate piece of gossip. You can come up with it. What do you do with the gossip then? Do you pass it on or just keep it to yourself?

We talk about it at every dinner party for the rest of time. We were still talking about gossip that was reviewed 20 years ago. Like there's some, like it just, yeah. It definitely is not the best way to keep it safe. Um, but there's often some wine too. I love it when people show up with like a great juicy story. So I am pro-gossip, bring it.

You won't be the one who breaks the trust, but you would aid and abet someone who is breaking someone else's trust to bring you a juicy story. Yeah, I'll also tell my husband immediately because he's not gonna tell anyone. I mean, anything you tell me, I probably told him. And he was like, interesting.

And he will remember it forever too. So watch out. I'm terrible. Don you tell me, I probably told him and he was like, interesting. And he will remember it forever too. So watch out. I'm terrible. Don't tell me anything. It is not safe. All right. Should we see what question Kelsey has for us? Yes.

Hi, Kenji. Hi, Deb. It's Kelsey McKinney. I'm the former host of Normal Gossip and I'm the author of the book. You didn't hear this from me, Mostly True Notes on Gossip, which is out soon. I have a huge question for you about brownies, because when I was a kid, my mom would have people over to watch The Bachelor every single Monday, and she would make Ghirardelli brownies out of the box.

And the thing is, they would take like 45 minutes. It was a perfect treat. Everyone could gobble them up while they talked about like who they hated and who they didn't hate. And now, you know, I'm an adult. I'm having people over to my house to watch traitors. And I don't know that I really want to make brownies, but I'm wondering like, what kind of treats do you guys think are perfect for this? Like something that I can whip up in maybe an hour that can become an iconic dish for my home and that people can eat while they gab about a TV show. Thanks so much. Bye This sounds like your department Deb. This is like asking a Muppet if they know how to count like I guess

You should make one of the earliest recipes on my website and it is the I call them the infinitely adaptable blondies and they are similar to my favorite brownies where you start with melted butter. Here, I really do like brown butter, but you don't have to use it. You can literally put these together in five minutes and they bake in, I wanna say like, is it 20 minutes? They're really, it's baked for 20 to 25 minutes.

But what's so fun about them is you can add, I have so many suggestions. You can add any kind of them is you can add, I have so many suggestions, you can add any kind of candy, you can add nuts, you can add espresso powder, you can add like almond extract, like really almost anything you wanna put in there. You can put bourbon in, you can put dried fruit, you can chop up candy bars.

Like they are forgiving or amenable to anything you wanna do. And I know a lot of people have like kind of incorporated them, it's kind of like recipe that you're gonna memorize after you make ones. And people definitely go berserk over them. They're very simple. I also feel strongly that blondies should have no leavener because I think they should have that fudgy texture. And so it's really just butter. We're going to use brown sugar, egg, flour, and then whatever kind of mixings

you want. Obviously chocolate chips, but from there you can go wild and you can really have fun making a mix that is all your own. Can I give a savory suggestion? What? No. No, yeah. This is also one of my, an early recipe of mine that is, that is, that has become a favorite at my house and I think other people's houses too. It's pull apart garlic knots. So essentially you can do it with store-bought pizza dough or you can make your own pizza dough, but you essentially make garlic knots. So you cut the dough into little pieces, you tie them into knots, you toss them with a garlic butter,

and then you pack them all into a cast iron pan. And then, you know, it takes a little bit of, the actual work is very minimal. It works best if you make them the day before, though, and just let them rise in the fridge overnight, and then you bake it all. And so they come out, well, garlicky and golden brown and delicious

in a single serving pan, and you pull them apart, and then you dip them into like a marinara sauce and you eat them like that. Wait, I want that so badly. Delicious. I just looked it up on the internet. Wait, you don't stuff them with a little piece of cheese, like a cube of cheese, do you? I don't stuff them with a piece of cheese, but I do have some variations on Serious Eats. There's a pepperoni variation. There's like a cheesy variation.

So yeah, you can definitely like, what you can do is like cut up cubes of mozzarella and mix them in with the knots before packing them into the cast iron pan. So you get little like pockets of melted mozzarella as you pull the bread out. You get little bits of melted mozzarella. You can knot them, you can also do them like monkey bread if you want, you know, just like make little balls.

But knotting them is fun and I think you get more of that. You know, the reason garlic knots are good is because they have those like little nooks and crannies to pick up the garlic butter and the bits and you know, which you don't really get with round bread balls or regular rolls. I am 100% making this and I love that you can use store-bought pizza dough. I know I live in New York City so there's a lot of pizza shops. If you don't want to go to a grocery store, use whatever they might or might not have. Almost any pizza shop you can go into will sell you a pizza dough. Probably even your local Domino's will do it.

Okay, I haven't tried Domino's, but usually your local slice shop, their bread is homemade, their dough is homemade, and they will sell you one. And it's usually super puffy in the oven and very hard to mess up. The wrap up questions, the first one is, does it waffle? And I'm going to give that one a resounding yes because in my second cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Every Day, I have a blackout brownie waffle sundae where I adapt my favorite brownies. I use a little bit of black cocoa powder to give a little bit of an Oreo vibe and you cook them in a waffle iron and then you make a brownie waffle sundae.

So that sounds excellent. I did some tweaking of the recipe. It's not like a straight brownie recipes. So it took a little finagling. But in general, yes, you can waffle it. Are you able to, are you able to waffle just plain like wet brownie batter? You know, it's been a few years since I developed it, and I want to say that I think the trickiest thing

is that you don't want it toasted too hard. Right, because it burns. But it's harder to take out of the waffle iron when it's soft. I often tell people in waffle recipes, like, open the waffle iron lid, give it a minute to kind of develop a little crust on it, you know, even before you try to remove it, it'll be a little bit easier.

Once it's on the tray, it's gonna set up. I think the trickiest thing is that you've got this cake-like texture, and when it's steamy, it's very soft, and you're really not trying to toast it hard. You don't want it to smell like burnt chocolate at all. So that was the trickiest thing. But in general, I feel like most, as long as you don't overcook them,

certainly a thin waffle, you could pretty reliably do with a brownie batter. All right. All right. So our next question is, does it taco? I mean, I'm immediately thinking of the ice cream tacos. Yeah, chocolate tacos. Oh, God, they're so good. Yeah, an ice cream taco with some brownie topping, I think it would be great. Does it leftover? Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. A Dale brownie kept on the countertop, not the fridge. You're wrong, but that's okay. We have room for all kinds of wrong on our show.

Can you cook it in a pan with butter? Like, could you do, I have a leftover brownie, I'm going to fry it up. I don't think it's going to improve it, but what do you think Kenji? That's a good question. No, I feel like a brownie is already packed with as much butter as it can take

And you're probably not you're just gonna make it greasy by frying it in butter. I've never having never tried it I'm guessing no, I would not want a brownie fried in butter Can you get brownies out of kids clothes with with difficulty? Yeah, it's a pain You've got both the grease and the chocolate stain not quite as as bad as tomato sauce, but it's up there for sure. It's less than ideal. Have you ever just told your kids to like, don't even look at them when you're thinking about food. They will find a way to get food on their clothes.

Yeah. My son has yet to go through a meal without knocking his cup over, whether it's a sippy cup or whatever. I mean, he uses virtually only straw cups now because every single meal his cup goes over, no matter what. It's a sippy cup or whatever. I mean, he uses virtually only straw cups now because every single meal his cup goes over. No matter what. It's a real test of a parent's temperament,

how you respond to spills at the table. It's also like a real good barometer for a day to day, like how your, what your mood is day to day. Like I can tell what mood I'm in because of the way I react to the messes that are being made. Oops. I almost knocked my glass of water over, which would have been very fitting end to this. Tell us about your favorite brownie recipe. Tell me all the ways that my opinions on brownies are correct. Tell us whether you like cold brownies or hot brownies or room temperature

brownies. Are you the mama bear, papa bear or baby bear of brownies? I want to hear your point of view even if I am not inclined to agree. Give me all the opinions. I love it when people mess with my recipes and tell me how they go. That's supposed to be the worst thing that can happen on the food internet. Somebody changes your recipe and then reports about it. I'm like, I love that stuff. That's a them problem, not a you problem.

Yeah. I'm not taking responsibility for what you did in your kitchen, but you can tell me all the ways you about it. I'm like, I love that stuff. That's a them problem, not a you problem. Yeah, I mean, I'm not taking responsibility for what you did in your kitchen, but you can tell me all the ways you tweet it. I'm not God, okay? My kids certainly don't think so. I wouldn't expect you to. If you've got any comments or questions about brownies or anything else we ever talk about on this show, you can tell us at therecipepodcast.com or tag us at Kenji and Deb or call us and leave us a message the old fashioned

way 202 709 7607. The recipe is created and co-hosted by Deb Perlman and Kenji Lopez-Alt. Our producers are Jocelyn Gonzalez, Perry Gregory and Pedro Raffaello Rosado of PRX Productions. Edwin Ochoa is the project manager. The executive producer for Radiotopia is Audrey Mardovich and Jory Lasordo is director of network operations. Apu Gotay, Emmanuel Johnson and Mike Russo handle our social media. Thanks for listening. The recipe with Kenji and Deb is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent,

creator-owned, listener-supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at radiotopia.fm.