Two top Spanish pastry chefs, two recipes for the same thing - the brownie - and one honest sentence worth more than all the culinary secrets: even one of them, jokingly, admits that "the colleague's is the better one." When masters argue over the most ordinary chocolate cake, it's worth hearing what actually makes the difference.

The first approach takes the simpler route: chocolate melted with olive oil instead of butter, plain sugar, a little baking powder for an airier texture. The second is richer and darker: butter, two kinds of chocolate, condensed milk, cocoa, and caramelized pecans - no baking powder, for a denser, more intense structure.

Both are baked the same - 180 degrees, 18 minutes - but that's exactly where the biggest secret lies. The brownie is taken out while the center is still a little moist; if you wait for it to be fully baked, you've already dried it out. That dense, juicy texture doesn't come from an expensive ingredient, but from the patience to take it out on time.

The rest are small things that make a big difference: quality chocolate with 60 to 70 percent cocoa, a pinch of salt that boosts the flavor, minimal mixing so not too much air gets in, and - perhaps the hardest - to cool it completely before cutting. The flavor, they say, deepens overnight. So make it today, eat it tomorrow, and you'll understand why even the masters argue over something seemingly so simple.