Nicole Rucker's tip for the best chocolate brownies? Rip up the rulebook

By Aiko Offner and Gab Chabrán

Published Jul 4, 2025 5:00 AM

Man with light skin tone stands with a woman in a yellow shirt with light skin tone. He looks at her as she has her hands up in a shrug and smiles. They are standing behind a table that holds bowls of egg, chocolate chips, flour and other baking ingredients.

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LAist recently kicked off a new event series called Cookbook Live in partnership with the James Beard Foundation.

The series, hosted by LAist food and culture writer Gab Chabrán, asks leading L.A. chefs to talk about their newly released cookbooks and the personal stories behind their creation.

(Watch out for Kiano Moju, author of AfriCali: Recipes From My Jikoni on Thursday, Sept. 18, and Roy Choi, author of The Choi of Cooking on Thursday, Nov. 13).

The first event — on June 26 at LAist's Crawford Family Forum in Pasadena — featured renowned baker Nicole Rucker, author of Fat + Flour: The Art of a Simple Bake: A Cookbook.

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A man and a woman, both with light skin tones, sit across from one another on a stage. On the wall behind them, the words "Cookbook Live" is projected in large letters.

In a night of banter, laughs and salivation-inducing brownies, Rucker shared her baking philosophy and a range of cooking tips.

Most important, she revealed step-by-step how she makes her famous Dark Chocolate brownies, handing samples out to the audience. For the full experience, you’ll have to watch here, but in the meantime, here's Nicole's guide to achieving baking nirvana.

A woman with light skin and shoulder-length brown hair wears glasses and a pink sweater. She sits at a table with a coffee cup and a plate with a large piece of pie.

1. Use many shapes and sizes of chocolate

Some of you may use cocoa powder in your brownies. Others may prefer pure chocolate. Rucker uses both and more, combining cocoa powder, 72% chocolate, 100% chocolate, and at the end, chocolate chips.

“All of these things are important for making the ultimate chocolate flavor and also the chocolatiest texture,” she said.

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A close up of a pan of brownie squares, deliciously brown and chocolatey, on parchment paper in a pan

2. Whisk a lot but not too much

The secret to the flaky, shiny, perfect top of a brownie? Whisking well. “ You have to really whisk the eggs in the recipe with the sugar to start to break it down. That's actually what makes that shiny papery layer on the surface,” Rucker said.

But she also warned not to whisk too much. That would create too much air in the mixture, which would dry out the brownie.

An overhead image shows a man stirring a bowl of brownie batter.

3. Use bread flour for chewiness

Higher protein flour, such as bread flour, can capture that magical “fudgy plus chewy” texture, according to Rucker. Using bread flour gives you “chew insurance”, as she puts it.

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“ The secret in a bakery is that we never make our brownies the same day that we eat them. They're made maybe seven days before,” Rucker shared. This time enables the brownies to sit and "cure," which creates that perfect texture.

A man uses an electric mixer in a bowl as a woman wearing yellow directs him.

4. Get air pockets out before placing the brownie batter in the oven

Rucker says you should smack your pan on the counter before cooking to remove any air.

She said many bakers use a quarter sheet tray, although that's not strictly necessary. But you should adjust accordingly.

“Everything bakes differently,” she explained. “ If you have a darker colored pan, you're gonna bake it a little bit less.”

A man and a woman sit across from each other on a stage. Between them is a cookbook called "Fat + Flour."

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5. Cook the brownies at a high temperature

Rucker bakes her brownies at 375 degrees in a conventional oven, or 355 in a convection oven. It's an unorthodox choice, higher than is traditional, which she says draws outraged emails.

For the brownies she'd pre-made for the event, she told the audience she'd used a convection oven and baked the brownies at 355° for 10 minutes, before rotating the pan, and baking for another 15 minutes.

“It gets the right consistency outside and inside,” she said. Cooking at a higher temperature also keeps the brownies from getting dry and chalky, she says.

Rucker then lets the brownies cool to room temperature and puts them in the fridge for a half an hour, which means you can cut them into much cleaner squares.