Fudgy, Cakey, and Chewy Brownies
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Brownies come in different varieties: chewy, cakey, and fudgy. These varieties vary the ingredients to move the brownie along a spectrum of pastries, from cakes to fudge to cookies.
I’ve found a recipe for each type and analyzed the composition.
Shoutout to the pancake princess for the brownie bake-off and giving me a starting point for finding recipes as well as categorizing them.
Cakey
Cakey brownies are the easiest to categorize: they’re like cakes. However, it’s not like you take a cake recipe and pour into a pan.
On a chocolate cake spectrum of richness, it goes:
- chocolate cake
- devil’s food cake
- brownies
Brownies have more fat and sugar than rich chocolate cakes. This would cause a cake to become dense and heavy, making it difficult to stack. Brownies, however, are sheet pan cakes and this is perfectly fine.
Cakey Brownie Ratio
| Ingredient | Baker’s % |
|---|---|
| Flour | 100 |
| Fat | 190 |
| Eggs | 166 |
| Sugar | 333 |
| Cocoa | 50 |
Fudgy
Fudgy brownies have a higher fat:flour ratio. In the range of ~3 times more fat than a chocolate cake recipe. This significantly weighs it down and gives it the characteristic fudge texture.
Fat can come in the form of butter, chocolate chips, oil, or egg yolks.
Fudgy Brownie Ratio
| Ingredient | Baker’s % |
|---|---|
| Flour | 100 |
| Fat | 325 |
| Eggs | 140 |
| Chocolate chip | 160 |
| Sugar | 285 |
Chewy
NOTE: there’s ambiguity between the understanding of chewy and fudgy classifiers. For the sake of discussion, fudgy is like fudge or molten lava cake. Chewy is akin to a cookie instead of a cake.
Chewy brownies can be thought of as moving closer to cookies. They are achieved by reducing flour ratio in a chocolate cake recipe. Compared to fudgy brownies, they have lower fat ratio and higher sugar ratio.
Fat tenderizes (opposite of chew) and flour gives structure (cakey).
Chewy Brownie Ratio
| Ingredient | Baker’s % |
|---|---|
| Flour | 100 |
| Fat | 135 |
| Eggs | 125 |
| Sugar | 330 |
| Cocoa | 50 |
General Rule of Thumb on Ratios
In general, manipulating the ratios is what differentiates cakey, fudgy, and chewy brownies.
- Increasing the ratio of fat moves a brownie towards fudgy.
- Increasing the ratio of flour moves a brownie towards chewy.
- More flour to chocolate cake makes a chewy brownie.
- More flour to a fudgy brownie makes a decadent, devil’s food cake (gives a bit of structure back).
- Increasing the ratio of sugar moves a brownie towards cakey.
Recipes
Fudgy from the Splendid Table.
Chewy from King Arthur Flour.
Cakey from AllRecipes.
Chewy and fudgy from King Arthur Flour. This one is balanced between extremes, with more more fat than the chewy recipe and more sugar than fudgy recipe.