As Laurie Colwin points out in More Home Cooking, pretty much everybody loves a brownie. There's really no downside to them. They go with everything but ketchup, and they're also lovely alone.

When I am expecting guests and don't have time to clean as thoroughly as I'd like, I throw a batch of brownies in the oven. Even any potential white-glove-testers in my crowd won't be able to care about the dust on my shelves in the face of chocolate in its perfect baked form.

Just as living things can be divided between the plant and animal kingdoms, brownies belong to one of two main families: cake brownies and fudgy brownies.

Cake brownies have more flour than fudge ones. They're made by creaming the butter and sugar together. The fudgy variety get their luscious texture from the butter having been melted together with the chocolate.

I prefer the softer sort. When I want a piece of cake, I'll have some cake. When I'm having a brownie, I want something that's just a shade firmer than chocolate fudge sauce straight from the jar.

It is entirely possible to make brownies with only one kind of chocolate. Provided you have sufficient sugar, you and your guests can survive on a brownie based solely on unsweetened chocolate.

But life should be about more than merely surviving. Why subsist on one kind of chocolate when you can have three?

Here's how to make the best brownies I've ever baked or eaten:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour an eight- or nine-inch cake pan.

Beat one to one and a quarter cup of sugar with two eggs for fifteen minutes. If you like to bake with sweet rather than salted butter, throw in a dash of salt with this.

If you're using a free-standing electric mixer, you can do this part while the eggs and sugar beat: melt eight ounces of semisweet and unsweetened chocolate with one stick (half a cup) of butter in a pot.

The proportion of semisweet to unsweetened depends on your preferences and what you have in the cupboard. Five semi to three un is good. Four and four works -- lean toward that extra quarter cup of sugar.

Use the best quality chocolate you can get. I find Scharffen Berger too harsh for eating out of hand, but I swear by their unsweetened for baking.

The semisweet should be dark but silky on the tongue. Tobler and Lindt are good. I know that grocery store chocolate is supposed to be completely unacceptable to true lovers of the bean, but I have had wonderful results with Ghirardelli and Baker's.

Many people prefer to melt their chocolate in a double-boiler. I always use a heavy-bottomed pot over the tiniest possible lick of flame. Either way, once the chocolate and butter are melted together, let them cool thoroughly.

Fold the cooled chocolate-butter mixture into the eggs and sugar, which should look thick and lemony by now. Gently stir in a quarter cup of flour, a teaspoon of vanilla, and a cup of chocolate chips.

Don't overbake the brownies. Check them at twenty minutes, and don't leave them in longer than twenty-five.

They won't look done at this point. The middle will still seem pretty swimmy. But it will firm up as the brownies cool, which they will take a few hours to do.

How many brownies this recipe makes is entirely up to you.