Air-Fryer Brownies Taste Good but Are Overrated and Annoying to Bake

Here are all of my assembled ingredients.

The ingredients.

Gabbi Shaw/Insider

I needed flour, sugar, brown sugar, two eggs, cocoa powder, butter, salt, vanilla extract, and chocolate chips for this particular recipe.

As you can see, I also have a box of Duncan Hines brownie mix in the corner in case this went poorly, but luckily, it wasn’t needed.

Here’s a better look at the air fryer. My main concern was finding a pan that would fit inside the basket.

The air fryer.

Gabbi Shaw/Insider

The recipe called for a 6-inch cake pan, but that wasn’t available at my local grocery store. I ended up buying two disposable aluminum loaf pans and one Pyrex container, since I didn’t know which one would end up fitting.

I also wasn’t totally sure what is considered “air fryer safe,” so I wanted to have options in case something didn’t work. I ended up only using the aluminum loaf pans — but now I have a Pyrex!

The first step was to combine the first set of dry ingredients: flour, cocoa powder, and salt.

Flour, cocoa powder, and salt.

Gabbi Shaw/Insider

Specifically, the measurements were 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup of cocoa powder, and 3/4 teaspoon of salt.

In a separate bowl, I combined the two eggs with brown sugar, vanilla extract, granulated sugar, and water.

Wet ingredients and sugar.

Gabbi Shaw/Insider

This bowl contained the two eggs, 1 tablespoon of water, 1/2 cup of granulated sugar, 1/2 cup of brown sugar, and 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract.

The final step was to pour the brownie mix into the pans I had — it would have been much easier to just pour it all into one large pan instead of these little ones.

One of my brownies.

Gabbi Shaw/Insider

This might seem like a nitpick, but it was genuinely annoying to pour half the mix out, deal with all the brownie mix dripping onto my counter, and then scrape the rest of it into the next pan.

And don’t forget to spray the pans with cooking spray!

After 45 minutes of air frying, I had successfully baked my first little brownie loaf.

The air fryer brownies.

Gabbi Shaw/Insider

This recipe stated to pre-heat the air fryer for 5 minutes at 300 degrees. Then, I put the brownies in at 300 degrees on the “air fry” setting (this one doesn’t have a “bake” button), and set the timer for 1 hour.

The recipe suggested checking on them at 45 minutes, which I did, and they were done at that point.

It took 90 minutes and a truly annoying level of counter space to make two teeny brownies. In the future, I’d stick to large brownie pans and an oven.

The brownies.

Gabbi Shaw/Insider

While I’d use this delicious recipe again — Ninja, great job — I wouldn’t necessarily use my air fryer to make the brownies. It didn’t save me any time, like the air fryer does with other dishes, and it was difficult to balance the limited counter space in my NYC kitchen with everything I needed to make my brownies.

I also feel like I didn’t actually get many brownies for all my work, since the air fryer basket is pretty small. There’s just something about pulling a giant pan of freshly baked brownies out of the oven that my air fryer couldn’t replicate.