Micki's Simple Bownies (made with Olive Oil) Recipe

For most of our lives Olive Oil has been limited to use as a salad dressing ingredient. In recent years the idea of dipping bread in Extra Virgin Olive Oil instead of using butter has broken some of the limitations placed on this liquid gold, but did you know that Olive Oil is a great ingredient in baking?

Micki Sannar created several unique recipes and adapted several others using heart friendly Olive Oil in place of other oils or even butter in both savory and sweet recipes. Her work is published in "Olive Oil Desserts." A favourite recipe of mine is her Simple Brownies.

The result here is a brownie that is somewhere between the cake-like brownies that result from using "vegetable oil" and the fudgy brownies from traditional butter recipes.

Ingredients :

4oz unsweetened chocolate

1/3 cup pure olive oil

1 ½ cups granulated sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

¾ cup flour

½ tsp salt

Method:

Preheat oven to 375 Fahrenheit. Coat the bottom of an 8x8” pan with olive oil cooking spray.

Place chocolate and olive oil in a small glass mixing bowl. Heat in microwave for 1 minute. Stir until melted and smooth. Set aside.

In a mixer bowl, add eggs, sugar and vanilla. Mix on medium/high speed for 5 minutes. Add in the chocolate mixture and blend until smooth and creamy. Fold in flour and salt. Mix until just moist. Do not overmix.

Bake for 20 – 25 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from over, cool slightly. Serve and enjoy.