Espresso Brownies

I’m always seeing recipes that call for adding coffee to chocolate baked goods. Espresso, coffee, instant granules—you name the coffee, I’ve seen it added to chocolate.

Recently, I picked up some instant espresso powder for just this purpose. I was eager to try it out, so I made Giada’s Espresso Brownies.

These are pretty good brownies. I like that they’re tiny, because they’re so easy to eat. Plus I somehow feel like I’m not eating very much, no matter how many I shove in my mouth.

The espresso powder is meant to highlight the flavor of the chocolate, which is exactly what it does. You don’t get much espresso flavor—just more chocolatey chocolate flavor. The topping is where the espresso really comes through. The rich brownie and the sugary espresso-vanilla glaze are a great combination.

Best of all, this is a very easy recipe. It’s simply jazzing up some boxed brownie mix. The only real work is in making the glaze, and that takes all of two minutes. The only suggestions I have are decreasing the baking time by about 10 minutes (if you’re using a 9x13x2 pan, they definitely don’t need 35 minutes) and adding about half a tablespoon of extra water to the glaze, just to make it more spreadable.

Oh, and a third suggestion: serve with ice-cold milk.