Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Sea Salt Brownies

Maybe it’s just me, and I’m pretty sure it is, but when it comes to brownies I want them to be perfect. By that I mean, the perfect combination of a cake like texture with a fudge like texture. It has taken me at least a year to discover my “perfect” brownie and many mistakes along the way before I finally stumbled upon this lovely little brownie.
This past July I decided to get some more use out of my ice cream maker, and fulfill my goal of making many different flavors besides the usual vanilla. The second and by far favorite, thus far, flavor I tried was a milk chocolate with brownie bits from Annie’s blog; where, of course, I got the recipe for these brownies. They we’re the perfect mix of fudge and cake and had the lovely crackly crust that all brownies should have. It took me all of five seconds to decide that this would be my go to brownie recipe, which was shortly affirmed by my husband. I was so happy to have found them and even more so when I learned that only half of them we’re going in the ice cream and that i could enjoy a few of them by just the way they are. This time around i decided to make some adjustments and came up with these sea salt brownies.

Sea Salt Brownies 
Adapted from Annie's Eats originally from The Perfect Scoop

 Ingredients: 
8 Tbs. Butter (1 Stick)
4 oz Unsweetened Chocolate ( i used Ghirardelli), Chopped
1 1/4 C. Granulated Sugar
2 Large Eggs 
1 1/4 Tsp Vanilla Extract 
1/2 C. All-Purpose Flour
1 large pinch of sea salt and a small second pinch  of sea salt 
1/2 C. Semi sweet Chocolate Chips (optional, i left out)

Directions: 
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 8x8 inch glass pyrex dish with alluminum foil, grease lightly with butter* or spray.In a medium saucepan melt butter, then whisk in chopped chocolate, remove from heat. Whisk in vanilla extract, sugar and then eggs. Add in salt and then flour, mix together until just combined. Mix in chocolate chips, if using. Pour batter into foil lined dish, gently spread out evenly. Sprinkle with sea salt, preferably flake (for more visibility). Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool on rack for 10 minutes. Take out brownies, remove foil and continue to cool on rack or enjoy warm. 

* To speed up greasing dishes, cookie trays, etc during baking. Use the wrappers from softened butter sticks (used for baking) and freeze them for later use. Defrost for 1-2 min and you have an easy way to spread butter on the pans. I usually keep about 4 in the freezer at a time, and since i bake often their always being replenished.  

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