Sea Salt Olive Oil Brownies

Hey guys, it’s Wednesday!!  We’re halfway through with this week.  Even so, last night didn’t feel like just Tuesday.  The week already felt like it was dragging on forever, and I knew that I would be needing some chocolate.  I have always made my brownies with butter.  Normally I’m a huge proponent of butter in everything.  This is what happens when one of your parents is from the Dairy State.  Everything really does taste better with butter on top.  Pancakes, pasta, and tomato soup all taste better with butter.  I’ve also been known to add cheese to my boxed macaroni and cheese, but that’s for another time.  We don’t butter bacon like Homer Simpson, but I bet it would be good!  In this case, however, I thought I would mix up my brownies.  I feel like I’m in the olive oil capital of the world sometimes, so what better place to make olive oil brownies??  I found some recipes online, but the ratios just seemed off to me, so I came up with my own.  I ended up making the perfect brownie to eat on the couch while watching Simpsons reruns dubbed over in Español.  Whatever gets you through, right?

Sea Salt Olive Oil Brownies:

Ingredients:

• 4 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate
• 3 ounces olive oil
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tbsp coffee
• 2 heaping tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350°F.  For most of you, that should be around 176 °C. 
2. Prepare your 8×8 pan.  I find a sheet of parchment paper to be the most efficient.  Easy clean-up.
3. Add olive oil to the chocolate.  Measure from the top of the chocolate before you added any oil.  {Or use a separate liquid measuring cup, but if you measure them together, you have one less thing to clean.}
4. Pour chocolate and oil into a large bowl.  {In my case, still a large pot.  Mixing bowls just aren’t on the priority list when you’re eventually going to move with only the 50lbs of things that can fit in a suitcase.}
5. Mix in sugar.
6. Add eggs and coffee, mixing well.
7. Add cocoa powder and stir until well combined.
8. Add flours and stir carefully to avoid flour flying all over your countertop.  {Not that I ever have this problem or anything.}  Try not to overmix.
9. Pour into prepared pan and spread evenly.  Remember to reach the corners.
10. Bake at 350°F for about 30 minutes, until a knife inserted into the center comes out with a few crumbs.  Remember, underbaking is so much better than overbaking. {*I actually baked at 200°C (about 400°F) for about 20 minutes, and then panicked that they were overcooked and pulled them out.  But I really don’t think my oven has been working properly lately, and I should really invest in an oven thermometer.  Every brownie recipe I’ve seen for an 8×8 pan calls for 350°F (176°C) for 30 minutes, so I would use that as your guideline.}
    
11. For those of you with self control, let cool completely on a wire rack before topping with sea salt and cutting.

Melt the chocolate.

Measure the olive oil.

Pour into your mixing vessel.

Stir to combine. The oil wants to sit on top of the chocolate, but we don’t want that.

Add your eggs and coffee and mix well.

Add cocoa powder.

And flour.

Mix in the flour, but don’t overmix. You shouldn’t actually see flour when you’re done, but my totally mixed-in flour picture was too blurry to post.

Get your batter into you pan. It’s not the prettiest looking, but it is delicious!

Sprinkle with sea salt and let cool. You can see I didn’t have a lot of patience to wait around or take pictures before I dug in.

Cut a nice piece and enjoy! A glass of milk is perfect with this brownie.

These were seriously good.  I could have eaten the whole tray last night, so the fact that I had any self-restraint is incredible.  They’re richer than your regular brownie, and really good!  I’ll be bringing the rest into work tomorrow so I don’t eat them all.

Have you ever tried making brownies with olive oil?  Do you have a favorite recipe?  Has your week felt as long as mine has, and do brownies make everything better for you too?

Update: I went ahead and calculated calories and nutritional info.  If you use MyFitnessPal, they’re already in there under Sea Salt Olive Oil Brownie.  The brand name is “Sophisticated Jersey Girl,” so they should be even easier to find.  For everyone else, here is the breakdown.  I assumed an 8×8 or 9×9 pan, and being realistic, that it would probably make 9 servings.  So here you go.  Per serving, or 1/9 of the batter/pan.

Calories: 345.7 {the app made me choose a whole number.  I rounded up to 346}

Fat (g): 10.9

Carbs (g): 50.1

Sugars (g): 38.5

Fiber (g): 1.8

Protein (g): 3.7

So there you go.  Not as bad for you as I feared when I started to calculate the info.  First I add everything up, and then divide it by servings.  Feel free to dig in guilt free because you know what you’re eating.