Swap The Oil And Water With Coffee And Butter For More Robust Boxed Brownies

Sometimes you have a craving for brownies but don't want to make them from scratch — well, luckily, there are boxed brownies for that. Further, you can make those boxed brownies taste a little closer to the real thing with a couple of easy substitutions. Specifically, swap out oil and water for butter and coffee — the result will be a more robust, more flavorful batch of boxed brownies.

Most boxed brownie brands call for you to add oil and water to the premade brownie mix — for example, Ghiradelli's double chocolate brownie mix calls for ¼ cup water and ⅓ cup vegetable oil, as well as one egg. Swapping out the ingredients is easy: match the amount of water to coffee, and match the amount of oil to butter. With coffee instead of water, the brownies will taste even more chocolatey as the coffee enhances the flavors of chocolate, while the butter will make the brownies much richer and fudgier than the oil will. Additionally, instead of swapping water for coffee, you could also add instant espresso or instant coffee mix into the batter for the benefits of mixing coffee with chocolate.

Now that you know that just a couple of changes can make a huge difference in flavor, you're probably wondering what else you can do to make your boxed brownies taste even better — and we have other tips for you.

Firstly, you want to make sure you pick out a good boxed brownie brand — and luckily for you, Tasting Table has already done the hard work and ranked the 11 absolute best boxed brownie mix brands. Our top three picks included Pillsbury Chocolate Fudge, King Arthur Baking Company's All-American Brownie Mix, and, at number one, any brownie mix from Ghiradelli (their options include Double Chocolate, Ultimate Chocolate, Chocolate Supreme and more). Choosing one of these will give you the perfect base to make the best possible batch of boxed brownies.

Besides the butter and coffee swapping trick, you can also enhance any boxed brownie mix simply by adding in some extra chocolate chips. Maybe you want to add some dark chocolate chips to your milk chocolate brownies for a more dynamic chocolate experience, or maybe you want to add some color with white chocolate chips. Or, in a similar fashion, you can add in some M&Ms— this will give the brownies an exciting color along with that extra chocolatey flavor.

Additionally, you could also throw in your favorite type of nut for a brownie with a crunch — plus, who doesn't love the combination of nuts and chocolate? Further, another addition you could keep in mind is vanilla extract, which will add some sweetness to balance out any of the natural bitterness from the chocolate.