Gordon Ramsay’s World’s Best Brownies
If anyone can make something the "world's best," it just might be Gordon.
Claiming that your brownies are the “world’s best” is a bold move. But if anyone can safely make a claim that a recipe is the best in all the world, it just might be Gordon Ramsay. His brownie recipe is pretty standard, but relies on melted dark chocolate and some extra chopped dark chocolate to top it all off. Since they’re Gordon’s, we knew they’d be good, but could they truly be the “world’s best”? We set out to find out.
We made these brownies as a part of our Celebrity Brownie Recipe Showdown. The showdown is a fun project where we take four celebrity recipes — some celebrity chefs, some not so much — cook them, and then taste and compare them to see how they stack up. This match-up included Kris Jenner, Gordon Ramsay, Alton Brown, and Snoop Dogg. They were all very different and delicious in their own right.
What’s In Gordon Ramsay’s Brownies?
Mostly, the things you would expect. Gordon calls for dark chocolate, butter, flour, eggs, vanilla, and then both caster sugar and light brown sugar. Caster sugar is a finer sugar that’s more common in the UK and Europe, but you can find it in the US as “bakers sugar.” You can also make your own by processing some regular granulated sugar in a food processor. For the purposes of this recipe, regular old granulated sugar will work just fine though.
Gordon’s measurements are in grams, which always makes for a more accurate baking experience. There are plenty of conversion calculators out there on the internet if you don’t have a kitchen scale!
How Do You Make Gordon Ramsay’s Brownies?
First, Gordon has you melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler until it’s nice and smooth.
Then there’s no mixer needed. You just take the bowl off the heat and whisk in the sugars and the eggs before you stir in the flour and such with a wooden spoon. The batter goes in a 9×13 pan and bakes for 20 minutes, at which point you remove it from the oven and “vigorously” throw chocolate chunks into the top with the aim of breaking the surface of the brownies. Then, they pop bake in the oven to finish baking.
How Do They Taste?
They are a great brownie, fudgy with layered chocolate flavor and nice balance of salty and sweet. But are they the world’s best? That might be overshooting it a bit. That being said, they’re absolutely a brownie we’d make (and enjoy) again!
To see how this stacked up in the Celebrity Recipe Showdown, click here!
Gordon Ramsay’s World’s Best Brownies
Ingredients
- 245g dark chocolate, broken into squares or roughly chopped
- 200g butter, diced, plus extra for greasing
- 175g caster sugar (superfine sugar or bakers sugar)
- 125g light brown sugar
- 4 large eggs, lightly beaten
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 115g all-purpose flour
- Pinch of sea salt
- 100g dark chocolate, chopped into small chunks (optional)
Preparation
- Preheat oven to 350°F and grease and line a 9x13-inch baking pan with parchment paper.
- Add chocolate and butter to a large heatproof bowl set over a pan of gently simmering water, but do not let the bottom of the bowl touch the water underneath. Stir occasionally until melted.
- Remove from heat and cool the chocolate down by whisking in both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla and mix in with a wooden spoon until combined.
- Sift the flour and salt over the top and stir again until smooth and combined. Pour into the prepared pan, smoothing out the top with a rubber spatula.
- Bake until cracked around the edges and soft in the middle, 35–40 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through baking.
- If you are adding the chocolate chunks, take the brownies out of the oven at 20 minutes and vigorously throw the chunks of chocolate into the half-baked brownies so they break the surface. Return to oven for remaining baking time.
- Transfer brownies to a wire rack and let cool in the pan, then cut into squares before serving.
Recipe from Gordon Ramsay.