Brownie Technique: The Underbaked Ideal

Lawson's brownie recipe in How to Be a Domestic Goddess established a specific technical position: the correct brownie is deliberately underbaked to produce a fudgy, dense interior that is almost molten at the centre while the exterior is set. This is not carelessness — it is a precise target that requires understanding what temperature produces the desired texture.

A chocolate brownie baked to a specific internal state — the exterior set and beginning to pull from the pan edges, the interior still moist and fudgy rather than cakey. The doneness test is tactile rather than visual.

• French fondant au chocolat (same deliberate underbaking to achieve flowing/molten centre — more extreme version), Swedish kladdkaka (sticky chocolate cake — same underbake philosophy), American fudge