Of Butterless Brownies

Have you ever wanted to bake or cook something and not have the ingredients for it? It has happened to me so many times that I've lost count. Today was one of those days. I wanted to bake something, but I didn't have butter, and that made baking difficult. Instead of simply going to the neighborhood store to get more butter, I decided that I should just get a recipe with no butter. That's were the trusty Googler came in. A quick search in Google yielded tons of butterless recipes. There was just one problem: most of them were also milkless and eggless, and that just sounded too sketchy for me. Egg substitute gives me the hibby gibbies. 

Lucky for me, I came upon this butterless brownie recipe. It called for extra virgin olive oil instead of butter and you used actual eggs too. It also had rolled oats, and in the original recipe, roasted almonds. I also didn't have those, so I simply left the almonds out and instead, replaced it with extra chocolate chips and a drizzle of Nutella. (I'm telling you, I adore that stuff) The result: perfect brownies with just one drawback: you'll have a hard time keeping away from these long enough for them to set well.

You will need:

100g melted chocolate (dark or in my case, semi-sweet)

1/3 cup Extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup flour

1/4 cup rolled oats

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 sea salt

2 eggs at room temperature

2/3 granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Chocolate chips (or nuts if you want)

Nutella, softened

First step is to preheat your oven to 175C or 347F. Then prepare your 8x8 baking pan by lining it with a lightly greased parchment paper. Whisk the melted chocolate with the olive oil in a bowl. In another bowl, mix together the flour, oats, baking powder and salt. In a larger bowl, beat the eggs and the sugar together until the mixture becomes pale and thickened. Fold in the dry ingredients, then the chocolate and oil mixture in too. Finally, add in the vanilla extract. Once everything has just come together, pour into your prepared pan. Sprinkle the top with extra chocolate chips and drizzle with Nutella. My best advice at this step is to go big. Don't scrimp (unlike me). Drizzle as much Nutella and chocolate chips and nuts as you want. Then place the pan in the oven and bake for 22-26 minutes or until the top is dry and a tooth pick comes out clean when you prick it.

PS. I adapted this recipe from:
http://www.passionateaboutbaking.com/2009/07/olive-oil-brownies-with-roasted-almonds-mmmmm-delicious.html
And yes, I loved these brownies. I watched them disappear before my eyes my my dad's coworker's kids gobbled them all up.