Every Recipe Has A Story: Salted Brownies
butter + sugar Gluten Free Salted Brownie, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
OK, that might be stretching it, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but I DO LOVE these brownies. They are ridiculously rich and chocolate-y while never feeling heavy or dense. The full-sized brownie is large-and-in-charge (nearly 3”x3” square!), but you can just as easily indulge in the whole brownie as you can chop it up and sprinkle it over a bowl of your favorite ice cream or even cut it in half it to fill out a beautiful dessert platter. They’re versatile like that…. and if you’re a chocoholic, they’re also addictive like that.
The Salted Brownie feels like it’s always been with me. I honestly can’t remember where I first found the recipe. Was it originally a gluten-free recipe or did I degluten it? How many test batches did I bake before I “nailed” it? Heck, I can’t even remember eating a brownie that wasn’t THIS Salted Brownie. I thought that I had adapted the recipe from BakedNYC which was kind of blowing up in nearby Red Hook, Brooklyn at the time, but when I look back at their brownie recipe, they include cocoa powder in their brownies which is signaturally missing from butter + sugar brownies.
BakedNYC’s brownies are on the fudgy-side and less cake-y which also describes a butter + sugar Salted Brownie. I mean, a brownie should be a brownie, not a flat square of chocolate cake, right? Their brownies also eschew nuts because who needs nuts in a brownie? A brownie is all about the chocolate. In the end though, there are a lot of differences between BakedNYC’s recipe and butter + sugar’s recipe, so I’m not convinced that’s where this recipe originated. Did it just spring from my head???
Honestly, probably not. Recipes are not meant to be patented or original. That’s the beauty of cooking. We all take from what we know, what others have shared with us through weathered cookbooks or passionate blog posts, and then we put our own spin on them, creating something familiar and new at the same time. And, that must be the case with butter + sugar’s Salted Brownie.
But, enough trying to remember where these chocolate-y delights came from. Let’s just get down to talking about why they’re so special and have been a constant in our kitchen.
As mentioned, one of the most special things about the butter + sugar Salted Brownie is that it includes ZERO cocoa powder. All that chocolate overload comes straight from quality GF chocolate. And, not just a smidgen of chocolate. We’re talking a pound and a half (1.5lb!!!) of chocolate. 1 pound of melted chocolate and a 1/2 pound of chocolate chips gently stirred into the batter before baking. I like to think that the use of actual chocolate instead of cocoa powder is part of what makes our brownies so fudgey and rich.
The other thing that makes our Salted Brownies so unique is their lightness. Despite only having 1/2 cup flour per batch, they do not bake up dense like a flourless chocolate cake so often turns out. Instead, our Salted Brownies manage to balance their intense richness with a magical lightness that doesn’t leave you feeling “too full.” I believe that this lightness comes from how long our recipe asks you to whip the eggs and sugar— a full 8 minutes on high. The egg & sugar mixture goes from a thin brighter yellow to a thick pale cream color. It’s positively voluminous and I really think some of this extra air contributes to the brownies’ final texture.
Then, I have to talk about my absolute favorite part in the recipe… adding the melted chocolate and butter to the mixer. It’s so pretty to watch the chocolate mixture swirl in. It’s like an edible spin art masterpiece! I always try to film it, but it never does it justice. — — —>
The final touch that makes our Salted Brownies salted is a light sprinkle of Maldon Sea Salt flakes over the surface half-way through baking. I have always loved the combination of salty and sweet. (If you’ve tried our Toasted Granola you know what I’m talking about.) The sea salt balances out the sweet and intensifies the chocolate in the best possible way.
Have you tried butter + sugar’s Salted Brownie? You can find it at all of our pop-up markets and order it from our online shop. It’s available in our “I Want All The Treats” Sampler Box, as well as in our Vanilla vs. Chocolate Box and Salted Brownies Box for shipping. If you’re local, you can Special Order a full- or half-batch (the brownies freeze amazingly well!) or you can put together a Mix ‘n Match box of treats to pick-up next day.
And, that’s the story of the butter + sugar Salted Brownie.
The End.