The Only Brownie Recipe You Will Ever Need

I'm serious.

This morning, a very chic woman came into the bookstore and told me that she’d come to a reading of mine at Community Bookstore when Other People We Married came out, and that I’d baked brownies, and then shared the recipe, and she’d been making them ever since. That was 12 years ago! That is dedication! And then one of my brilliant booksellers showed me how to look up my old website and reread all my posts from then, and I really did bake brownies a lot! And bring them to book events! I even brought brownies to BEA once. There is a lot to unpack there—why did I think I had to bake for everyone? Why did I not think I was smart enough/good enough/worthy enough if I didn’t bring everyone a treat? Why do I need to be liked so badly?—but let’s save that for my therapist and instead focus on the brownies.

Here’s the thing—they’re perfect. Allow me to explain: they are gooey. They are rich, fudgey blocks of serious chocolate. These are not brownies for babies. These are not from a box. These are made from GOOD chocolate and SO MUCH butter and I wish I could make one materialize right this second. If I had good enough chocolate on hand, I would.

The recipe is from Regan Daley’s book In the Sweet Kitchen, published by Artisan in, let’s say 2002. I say 2002 because I worked at Artisan from June 2002 until December 2002, and that’s when I took it home from the office. I don’t know that it was explicitly allowed, for us to steal books, but I sure did it liberally. Sorry, Workman Publishing! I did not love working there, but it was a wonderful company, and I met my husband because he worked in the art department, so all in all, it was an extremely clutch gig. I like to joke that I only worked there to find a husband, but in truth, it was also for this brownie recipe.

The book is out of print, and there are copies at the various used book emporiums of the world, but with apologies, Regan, the world needs this recipe! I hope you don’t mind me sharing it again after so many years. It really is perfect. Iconic. I don’t know if it would be too hyperbolic to say that it’s the reason I got a book deal from a major publisher.

Please, make these brownies and report back. I’ll make a batch too.

Look at how much flour and cocoa powder is sitting in the spine of the book. Now’s that what love looks like.