Best Brownies Ever

You will find others that claim to be the best brownie recipe, but these are better. Beating the butter gives their dense fudginess a unique light quality that no melted-butter brownie can match. This recipe is from Brownies: Over 100 Scrumptious Recipes by Linda Burum.

4 oz (113.5 g) unsweetened* chocolate
1/2 cup butter, unsalted, room temperature
1 1/8 cup (=1 cup + 2 Tbsp) sugar
2 tsp vanilla
4 eggs
2/3 cup flour, stirred
(1 1/4 cups walnut pieces – optional)

Melt the chocolate over hot water; set aside to cool. Cream butter until fluffy, add the sugar in three portions, beating after each addition; beat until light and creamy. Beat in the vanilla, then the eggs, one at a time. Mix in the melted chocolate. Fold in the flour (and walnuts). Pour batter into a greased and floured 8×8 inch pan**. Bake in preheated 325 °F (165 °C)  oven about 20–25 minutes, or until no longer raw in the middle. Cool completely before cutting.

*If I only have semisweet chocolate available, I use 6 2/3 oz (190 g) semisweet chocolate and reduce the sugar to 7/8 cup.

**In the book, the recipe as given above is supposed to be for a 9×9 inch pan, but I find it turns out better in an 8×8. To get the equivalent thickness for a 9×9 inch pan (using semisweet chocolate) my version is:

240 g (= 8.5 oz) semisweet chocolate
5/8 cup (=10 Tbsps) (142 g) butter
1 cup + 1 tsp sugar
2 1/2 tsp vanilla
5 eggs
5/6 cup (=3/4 cup + 1 Tbsp + 1 tsp) flour