Brownie bakers? I have a few questions.

[Major Nikon]

12. Baking chocolate is basically cocoa powder and cocoa butter

If it's semi-sweet or bittersweet then sugar has been added. Most of the chocolate flavor comes from the cocoa powder. So if you want more chocolate flavor, add more cocoa powder and the better powder you use, the more intense the flavor will be. By adding chocolate bar you are effectively adding more cocoa powder and more fat from the cocoa butter, so cutting the butter makes sense. How much of each you'd need I couldn't say because I haven't made it that way. What i can say is that a 70% chocolate bar like Ghirardelli has 20g of fat and if you are using a whole stick of butter and cutting that in half you are cutting out about 56g of fat as a whole stick has 113g. If they are turning out gooey it could be that they are undercooked. The toothpick test is probably the best way to judge doneness as the internal temperature at which the batter sets will depend on the sugar content in the recipe.

I'm not a big fan of coffee extracts or instant coffee, but I haven't tried them all. I've heard some of the newer instant coffees that are now on the market are better, but I haven't tried them. When I want to add coffee flavor for culinary purposes, I use espresso, but I have the advantage of a real espresso machine.