When cooled, my browies are very sticky and hard towards the edges. What are the possible reasons that this is happening?

Question

My recipe:

• 150g butter
• 90g chocolate
• 125g flour
• 15g cocoa powder
• 300g dark brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp vanilla

Melt the butter and chocolate together. In a separate bowl beat the eggs, sugar, and vanilla. Add the cooled chocolate and butter mixture. Sieve in the flour, cocoa ,and baking powder. Fold everything with a spatula, until just combined. Bake in a preheated oven at 180° C for 25 mins.

Answer 1

I think you are trying to make a more chewy brownie, and your got a quite like hard and cookie like at the bottoms.

Dark brown sugar contains more molasses than in light brown sugar then in white sugar. Molasses is hygroscopic which means it holds on to moisture and so using brown sugar will result in baked goods that are softer and moister. But if your brownie bottom is hard, it is not the problem of lacking for moisture in your brownie mix (not brown sugar problem making the brownie hard). And if the centre of the brownie is the type of cake you need, then the reciepe is ok.

I would suggest:

1. Use a suitable baking pan size(diameter) that could make your brownie batter is of certain thickness (else your brownie maybe overbaked and becomes hard, if the brownie mix are too thin in the pan)
2. Butter (or spray with a nonstick cooking spray) an your baking pan, and line the bottom of the pan with parchment or wax paper.

Answer 2

After a little research it seems like this happens because the sides cook too much, to fast, while the center is not so much done. You check the center until it is done, but by then, the outside has cooked too much and dries out. Here are two links to experiment. The first one seems much easy to try and we look forward to the result.

1. Take the brownies out halfway through coooking, wait 15 minutes, put them back in the oven. Oops! The Mistake That Led to A Better Brownie
2. Use parchment paper, some cool water and allow the brownies to finish cooking themselves outside the oven in a foil wrap, rather than over cooking in the oven. How to Keep Brownies From Getting Hard Around the Edge of the Pan

At the end of the day, both of these ideas cause the temperature to be less hot steadily around the edge of the pan so preventing them from drying and getting crusty on the edges. In other words, they give the brownie edges a chance to cool down before overcooking and let the center catch up by ambient heat.