Fudgiest 100-Hour Brownies Recipe Vs. Gemma’s Best-Ever Brownies

Bold Bakers, I was really intrigued when I saw a viral video for 100-hour brownies from Alvin Zhou who was from Buzzfeed Tasty. And I thought to myself, you know, are these results, like, are, is it the fudgiest, best brownie you're ever going to taste? I didn't know, so I decided to try it. This is my original brownie recipe, but I'm gonna use his exact same technique because that's really where the secret is in this recipe. We're gonna go step by step and just see if we get, like, amazing results. So in a nice big bowl here, I have some chopped bittersweet chocolate. You're talking around 70%, I'd say no less cocoa solids. You want really good quality to make the best ever brownie. Into this, I'm going to add in some cold cubed butter. My recipe calls for salted butter. I love that extra bit of salt in a brownie and it just benefits it so much. And with all of this, like, time of resting and waiting 100 hours, it's gonna make it taste even better. Now, you can do this two ways. You can put it over a bain-marie on the stovetop or you can be lazy like me and put it in the microwave very gently for a few seconds until the whole thing is melted. Here is my melty chocolate, lovely. So into this mixture I'm going to add in dark brown sugar. Dark brown sugar in brownies adds extra moisture, it actually has more moisture than a regular granulated sugar, so it just adds to the fudginess of it. It also has a caramel flavor, so you're adding in flavor with this lovely, like, toasty, kind of hickory brown sugar. It's really delicious. Sometimes you see a mix of sugar, sometimes you only see white. With brownies you have to have some dark sugar in there to really just, like, get that really amazing flavor. Next we're going to add in our salt. So now sometimes people add the salt in with their flour. I like to add it in early. If you're making custards, add it into the egg. Because I like it to dissolve, actually, in the chocolate mixture and just get all the way throughout, rather than adding it in later when the batter is cooler and, like, it doesn't melt. I want it to get everywhere and I really think that makes a difference. Next is vanilla extract, a must in any of my brownie recipes. I like to use Rodelle Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla Extract. This is one of my favorites. The quality is amazing. It just really makes for, like, overall delicious brownies. Beautiful. Eggs, room temperature eggs, they don't want to be too cold going into our batter. And then we're just going to whisk all of these ingredients together. Whisk it until it's nice and smooth and there's no lumps. You get a whisk together until it's lovely and smooth. It kind of looks like chocolate jelly. Lovely. Now into our wet ingredients we are going to mix in a little bit of all-purpose flour, just regular flour here. No raising agent in a brownie. We want it to be fudgy, not cakey. So this is what we're going for. Just mix in that flour until it is all combined. There's no more streaks. And then stop! So that is our batter. Here I have an 8x8 pan, kind of a classic brownie pan. Poor, look at that batter. I mean 100 hours or not, this is going to be a damn good brownie. Every last bit of brownie batter into your pan. Now in the recipe you'll see there's some little bit of chocolate that we reserve just for the top. Like so. Very generous with this, scatter it all over. Again, bittersweet chocolate. We do not want to use semi-sweet or we definitely don't want to use milk. Please don't use milk. Please, please, please, please don't use milk. Bitter sweet chocolate all the way. Okay, there's nothing left to do except cover it up nice and snug. Okay so let's take note. We're going to leave that brownie batter in my fridge for 3 days, 72 hours fully. Then we're going to come back to it. So why are we doing this? What difference does it make? I will tell you, time helps develop flavor and it helps develop texture. We know this so well from breads and cookies and all those things. So why wouldn't it work with a brownie? So during the time in the fridge the flour actually absorbs more into the liquid of the brownie which helps improve like on a fudgier texture. You know over time when you put like a cookie dough into the fridge and we talk about aging, the liquid evaporates from the dough in the fridge so you get a different texture but you also get a concentrated flavor. So all of this is making sense to me. I hope it is to you too. I'm excited about the results. I really think it's going to be absolutely delicious. So I'll see you in 3 days. So here I am 72 hours later. I'm baking off my brownies at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, 180 degrees Celsius for roughly around 40 minutes or so. So the one issue that I had with this recipe and I saw some comments online was that Alvin took a cold batter from the fridge and put it straight into the oven and normally we would work with a room temperature batter, push it into the oven and then bake it. So your fudgy brownies are now going to be even fudgier because you had a cold batter going into a hot oven. So I'm just saying like is it the 100 hour method that's making them super fudgy or is the fact that you put a cold 3 day dough into a hot oven? We're going to find out. You know when brownies are done because they're kind of firmer around the edge here but they should always have a little bit of a soft jiggly middle. That's really what you want. That means that you know that they're not overcooked and once they cool down which takes a few hours it'll continue to bake and that will set even more. So you want that little bit of a wobble in the middle. But this is lovely. Now let me tell you what Alvin does next which is this is a new one on me. I trained as a pastry chef over 20 years ago. I've never heard this one but you know I'm trusting in the method. It's interesting but you now cover it up hot from the oven. Just like so. Be careful of your hands. And he says to put them now into the freezer for 30 minutes. Doing so will trap any moisture that would escape from the brownies, keep it inside making them even more moist. Which you know makes sense. So let's go put them in there now. And we'll see you for 30 minutes. Okay everyone, I hope you're excited. This is the moment of truth. Let's cut these bad boys and see what's going on on the inside Coming cold from the fridge. They're definitely firm and dense, which is kind of what I like. Okay, let's have a little look at the fudgy center Wow, we look at that. All you can see is fudge There is absolutely no cakiness in this brownie from top to bottom going through the hundred-hour process I really do believe that these brownies benefited from us and it produced this lovely fudgy and Moist texture in the middle don't take my word for it. Look for yourself Here is the exact same brownie batter that I baked off earlier today And here is our hundred-hour brownie and you can see Straight away the difference the one that we baked today is shiny because it has just been baked The other one is a bit matte because it is cold But the one from today is cakey and it's very crumbly. It's not thick and fudgy like the other one There's a little bit of fudge in there in the middle, but nothing compared to the hundred-hour brownie Now I know you can't taste it. So I'm gonna do it for you Yeah, the flavor is intensified in these brownies. Everything has just been like Sitting and like fermenting and aging over four days. What makes us so delicious and rich. I have to say I'm a believer I'm about this texture and this flavor. It is Intensified it is salty. You can even smell it off it. It is so incredibly rich the salt the vanilla It's just so pronounced. It's like everything is Concentrated in these like packed little chocolate like squares that are just loaded with flavor and fudgy texture I mean, I can't say enough about this I know I might be a little bit late to these hundred-hour brownies, but man, am I glad I know about them now They are so delicious Definitely try this recipe and let me know what you think. Thanks so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video And I'll see you back here again. Same time same place next week