Craving gooey, fudgy chocolate brownies? Here is the recipe for you

There’s an important question all dessert lovers must answer at some point in their lives: Do you prefer cakey brownies or fudgy brownies?

For me, the answer is simple. I want the fudgiest, gooey-est, most chocolaty brownies I can get my hands on. In fact, if it were up to me, I’d just take a spoon and eat the batter as is. But the CDC tells me that’s not exactly safe, so we’ll go with the second-best option: Brownies that are fully baked, but still warm and gooey.

These brownies were the very first recipe I learned how to make. And for a while, they were the only thing I made. I’ve since ventured into making other desserts, but I always come back to my brownies.

I have two secrets for this recipe. The first is adding semi-sweet chocolate chips to the batter. It makes the brownies fudgier and you get more chocolate, and when is more chocolate ever a bad thing? Spoiler alert: It’s never a bad thing. The second is replacing half the amount of butter with unsweetened applesauce for a healthier twist. I promise you’ll never even know it’s there.

I’ll say this: Baking these brownies is easy. Cutting them up into neat squares is the hard part. I recommend chilling them in the freezer for about two hours before cutting with a plastic knife (I know that sounds weird, but this trick has changed my life).

Whenever I make these brownies, I remember my cardinal rule of cooking: A recipe is only as good as the cleanup process. This recipe only requires a bowl for mixing and an 8-inch baking dish. The end result is gooey brownies and minimal cleanup. Could you ask for anything better?

Serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for a brownie sundae that’s out of this world.

Adapted from Ghirardelli’s Classic Chocolate Brownies. This story originally published in the Lexington Herald-Leader.

This story was originally published August 5, 2022 at 2:48 PM with the headline "Craving gooey, fudgy chocolate brownies? Here is the recipe for you."