For Chewy Brownies, Your Sugar Ratio Is Key

Any chocolate dessert lover most likely has a brownie recipe they bake on repeat. But brownie preferences can vary immensely from person to person and day to day. Some reach for the crispy edge pieces, others for the gooey middle slices. Some like fluffy and cakey brownies, while others prefer their brownies to be soft and chewy. If you're a fan of the latter and are looking to get brownies with a crispy crust and soft interior every time you bake them, make sure you're looking into your sugar ratio.

For the perfect chewy brownie, look for a recipe with a higher sugar-to-fat ratio, a balanced mix of flour, sugar, and cocoa powder, and a higher egg content. The increased sugar and eggs in your brownie recipe will help provide a tender texture and give your brownies extra moisture, resulting in the soft and chewy interior you're after. If you're using a low-sugar brownie recipe, be wary about reducing the sugar content further, as you risk being left with dry and dense brownies.

Apart from its prominent role in sweetening baked goods, sugar does a lot more for your favorite desserts that you might not know about. It helps keep baked desserts, such as your favorite chocolate brownies or blueberry muffins, nice and moist. It absorbs the water content of other ingredients well (and retains it after baking), so your muffins and brownies will stay softer and fresher for longer.

The process of caramelization in your desserts also happens thanks to sugar. When exposed to a certain amount of heat, the sugar in your recipe will start to caramelize. This is the reason for your crispy brownie exterior, a golden-brown cookie, and deeper flavor notes in desserts. Another unexpected role of sugar in baking is stabilization. The meringue in your homemade pavlova recipe or lemon pie only holds its shape so well because of sugar. Sugar essentially acts as a glue between water and air, allowing mixtures like meringues to hold their shape without falling.

If you want super chewy brownies, try melting your butter and sugar together first. Melting these ingredients instead of creaming the two together introduces minimal air to the mixture. This results in chewier brownies with a dense texture and no unwanted air pockets.

Under-baking your brownies is another important factor to give you the soft interior you're after and help you avoid being left with dry brownies. Keep an eye out for your brownies, especially toward the end of their baking time, as a few minutes is all it takes to overbake them. If your brownies are pulling away from the edges of the pan and look set in the middle, they're probably done. A good way to be sure is to insert a toothpick in the center of the pan. The toothpick should come out with only a few moist crumbs.

Chill your brownies in the fridge immediately after baking them in the oven to help add to the chewy texture you're looking for. For extra chewiness, leave the brownies in the refrigerator for up to an hour before taking them out and slicing.