These are my idea of the perfect brownie. Good texture just starting to get fudgy, and good chocolate flavor. And it rises to brownie height!
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Combine sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl, and mix well.
Butter sides and bottom of a 8x8 square glass dish, and then lightly dust with flour.
Melt butter in saucepan with cocoa and stir until smooth. Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly. Stir in eggs until combined. Stir in vanilla.
Add cocoa-butter mix to the flour/sugar mixture. Stir until just combined.
Pour into buttered glass dish. Bake 40 minutes until done. I go for just starting to dry in the corners, and that almost-springy cracking when pressing on the top.
Let cool for an hour, and cut into bars.
Started with Katharine Hepburn's Browniew:
Without the nuts, of course. They weren't quite what I wanted, very flat and not much structure, and not very chocolatey. I did like the process for them, very simple.
I looked at a bunch of other brownie recipes, and they were all over the place. So, since I liked the process for the Katharine Hepburn brownies, I decide to just try modifying them.
I added flour, cocoa powder, and baking powder. They rose great, but were dry and not very sweet. I cut back on the flour, and got a fairly nice texture, but not sweet enough and some leavening flavor. I cut back on the leavening, and they were perfect.
Nice texture and thickness, good chocolate flavor, just starting to a bit of fudgyness in the center. I thought the sweetness was good, my SO, however, thinks they're not sweet enough.
I'm keeping this recipe, but I'll work on variations and frosting to get it sweet enough for my SO.