Cocoa Brownies

Preheat oven to 300°F. Spray an 8"x8" baking pan with nonstick spray. Line the pan with a piece of parchment paper, cut to size. (The paper should stick to the spray if it is put in immediately.) Melt the butter.

In a mixer with a paddle attachment, beat the eggs at medium speed until they lighten in color or texture. Set the mixer to its slowest setting and sift in the sugars, cocoa, flour, and salt. When the dry ingredients are fully integated, slowly pour in the butter, then the vanilla. After about thrity seconds, stop to scrape down the bowl, then mix again for another ten seconds.

Use a flexible dough blade to scrape out the bowl into the prepared pan. Move the pan to the oven and bake for 45 minutes, or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the middle comes out with just a few crumbs.

Remove the pan from the oven. Use the parchment to lift the brownies out of the pan. Cut immediately into squares (a good pizza cutter works well here), then use the parchment to transfer the cut brownies to a cooling rack.

Of course, you can eat them as soon as they are cool enough to handle, but if you let them cool on the counter and then sit in the refrigerator overnight, they get very dense and chocolatey.

Makes 9–12 brownies (depending on your cutting).