Do you love potato chips? I'm a huge chip (or as they say in the UK, 'crisp') fan! And I shamelessly look for ways to add them to my recipes. My new potato chip brownies are a fun twist on a classic fudgy chocolate brownie, with a layer of potato chips baked right in.
Ingredients
This recipe can easily be divided into three parts: dry ingredients, wet ingredients and potato chip layer.
Dry Ingredients
- Flour - all purpose flour or plain flour will work in this recipe.
- Cocoa powder - this recipe calls for an equal amount of cocoa powder to flour. This means that the quality of your cocoa powder is all the more important because it will be such a prominent feature in the makeup of the batter.
- Sugar - this recipe uses three types of sugar. You'll want white granulated sugar (or caster sugar), light brown sugar (muscovado) and powdered sugar (also known as confectioners sugar or icing sugar).
- Salt
Wet Ingredients
- Oil - the key to fudgy brownies is using flavourless oil rather than butter. I recommend either sunflower oil or canola oil, but you can use vegetable oil or even olive oil (bearing in mind the olive oil will impact the flavour of the bake).
- Water - just standard tap water.
- Eggs
- Vanilla extract - no brownie is complete without a good dose of vanilla!
Potato Chip Layer
- Potato chips - also known as crisps in the UK. You want a chip that is relatively strong in flavour to meet and compliment the fudgy brownie. I made this recipe with standard salted chips, but I'd not recommend anything too lightly salted or it will be mostly drowned out by the chocolate.
- Light brown sugar (muscovado)
For the potato chip layer - simply crush the chips and then stir through the brown sugar. This can be done similar to rubbing a streusel or crumble topping together, using your hands to mix and coat the potato chips in the sugar.
Set this aside until you're ready to put together the brownies for baking.
Basic Brownie Batter
This brownie dough is very straightforward. Begin with preheating your oven and lining an 8" square baking pan with parchment paper. This lining will make removing the brownies to slice significantly easier once they're ready!
Then, simply whisk the wet ingredients in a large bowl until fully incorporated. In another bowl, stir together the dry ingredients. Add the dry ingredients to the bowl of wet and stir with a spatula until just combined. Take care not to leave any pockets of the dry ingredients unmixed.
Pour half of the mixture into the prepared baking tin, use an offset spatula or knife to spread an even layer into the corners. Then top with the potato chip sugar mixture and then the remaining brownie batter.
For the top layer of batter, gently nudge the brownie mixture over the chips - these will be loose, so spreading will cause them to move about. You want to try avoiding mixing the chips into the batter too much, but you also want to have an even brownie layer on top.
Add some extra smashed potato chips to the top and bake!
Letting Brownies Rest
As with my other brownie recipes, one of the keys to a fudgy chocolate brownie is the slightly underbaked texture. In order to achieve this, you need to bake until a skewer comes out mostly clean. Then, the most important part: let the brownies cool!
You want to let these potato chip brownies cool for at least 2 hours to ensure that they've firmed up enough to cut easily, while maintaining a nice fudgy texture.
FAQs
Brownies with potato chips are best eaten on the day they're made for the best flavour and freshness. They can last for a couple of days, kept at room temperature in an airtight container. The chips, however, will begin to stale the longer they are in the batter.
These brownies with a layer of potato chips baked in will taste like a fudgy chocolate brownie sandwiching a thin layer of crisp chips with a crunch of salty crushed potato chips on top.
While brownies and potato chips can both be frozen, I would not recommend freezing this particular recipe. The wait for these to cool completely prior to freezing and then the subsequent need to defrost, risks the chips becoming stale and less pleasant.
If you like this recipe, try some of my other brownies and bars:
Potato Chip Brownies
Equipment
- 8" square baking tray
- large mixing bowl
Ingredients
- 3 eggs
- ¾ cup flavorless oil such as sunflower oil or canola oil
- 3 tablespoon water
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup superfine granulated sugar or caster sugar
- ½ cup light brown sugar (muscovado) firmly packed
- 1 cup all purpose flour or plain flour
- 1 cup cocoa powder
- ½ cup powdered icing sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 cups crushed potato chips plus extra for the top
Instructions
- Begin by preheating an oven to 350°F (175C/155C Fan) and lining an 8" square baking tray with parchment paper.
- In a bowl, mix together the crushed potato chips with 2 tablespoons of the brown sugar. Set this aside.
- In a large mixing bowl. whisk together the eggs, oil, water and vanilla.
- Using a separate bowl, stir together the granulated sugar, remaining brown sugar, powdered sugar, flour, cocoa powder and salt.
- Add the dry ingredients (the flour mixture) to the wet ingredients (the egg mixture). Stir together with a spatula until just combined, ensuring that no pockets of unmixed flour remain.
- Pour half of the batter into the prepared baking dish. Use a knife or offset spatula to spread gently to the edges and corners.
- Sprinkle the potato chip and sugar mixture over top, covering the brownie layer in an even coating of potato chips.
- Pour the remaining brownie batter over top of the potato chips (see note) and spread gently to the edges and corners.
- Bake in the centre of the preheated oven for about 45 minutes, checking until a toothpick inserted near the centre comes out mostly clean.
- Allow the brownies to cool in the pan for about 2 hours before removing and slicing.
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