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I am not a chocolate person. I still love Snickers bars at Halloween but I get a knife out of the drawer and cut the chocolate away. So why in the world did I feel like I needed to master the homemade brownie? I grew up with a chocolate-loving mom who made the boxed mixes all the time. So there is a bit of nostalgia there and I can handle the edge piece of a not-too-chocolatey brownie if it has walnuts in it. My mom even gifted us a brownie pan that only makes edge pieces. My attempt at mastering a homemade brownie was an experiment for a patient back in my working days. The brownies you know and love are usually of the boxed variety, filled with preservatives and questionable ingredients and up until this recipe, I had never found one that came out remotely close. Chewy not cakey, the right crinkling on top–something to sink your teeth into. This recipe has been a winner over the years and this year made some sweet Valentine’s Day Heart Brownies.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

I printed this now well-loved recipe off in 2014. I was working full time as a Registered Dietitian at a RSU unit. I was sitting with a patient and family and listening to this sweet patient reminisce about brownies. How badly she wanted one but the family was reticent to bring her some given her health challenges. She didn’t want your “food service at an RSU” brownie. She wanted the ones that use to come out of her oven when she had small kids underfoot. That is the power of food–that it can linger so long in our memories. So I scoured the internet, researched the food science of a brownie (spoiler alert: it comes down to a combo of fats) and when I got back to my desk, printed this copy off. I did a lot of recipe hunting in those days. The homemade version with better ingredients and no preservatives was a more appealing option to the family and one the medical team was willing to allow for quality of life.

A FEW NOTES ABOUT THIS RECIPE

I have a Master’s degree in nutrition from Boston University. I’m never going to be able to leave a recipe alone. So I’m sharing the little tweaks and how I make these, not the original print out version from 2014. No one is ever going to consider brownies a “health food” but we can make little changes to each recipe to considerably up the nutritional quality–better flours, better oils, better sugar and/or a combo of different kinds. Science is always showing us more about how foods effect the human body.  I don’t ever use Canola oil instead, bake with a high quality Walnut Oil (don’t use this if you have nut allergies), Pumpkin Seed oil, or Avocado oil.  I still don’t like chocolate so I cut down the cocoa powder by 1/4 C and add cinnamon for a more “Mexican Hot Chocolate” taste. But if you want that traditional brownie, increase the cocoa powder to the original 1/2 C and nix the cinnamon.

INGREDIENTS

1/4 C Cocoa Powder (Not Dutch Processed) *original recipe calls for 1/2 C for all you chocolate lovers out there

1 1/2 tsp Espresso Powder

2 oz Unsweetened Dark Chocolate, roughly chopped

1/2 C + 2 Tbsp (150 ml) Boiling Water

4 Tbsp Butter (I use Kerry Gold or Vital Farms and always salted) *I melt mine in the microwave until it is 70% melted

1/2 C + 2 Tbsp (150 ml) Walnut Oil (beware of nut allergies, consider avocado or another neutral vegetable oil)

2 Large Eggs

2 Egg Yolk

1/2 tsp Cinnamon

2 tsp Vanilla Extract

2 1/2 C Granulated Sugar (I use 2 C granulated + 1/2 C Date Sugar, I haven’t played around with greater substitutions but it is worth a try given how much sugar this is)

1 3/4 C Flour (I use 1 C of Caputo Baking Flour + 3/4 C Whole Wheat Einkorn Flour, I import all my flour from Italy given the high levels of Cadmium in American Flours)

1 tsp Salt (I love this variety from Oregon)

1/4 tsp Baking Soda

1 Cup Walnuts, roughly chopped

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 9×13″ baking dish with butter and set aside.

Combine cocoa powder, espresso powder, chopped dark chocolate in a large bowl. Add boiling water and stir until chocolate is melted.

Whisk in melty butter and oil. When it has cooled a bit (it’s so cold in our house right now that this didn’t take long, by the time the chocolate was melted it was basically lukewarm) add in your eggs, egg yolk and vanilla until smooth. Do not add the eggs right away if the liquid is still boiling hot, you can curdle the eggs. Stir in the sugars.

Add the flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and nuts (if using) and mix until combine.

Pour batter into greased baking dish and put in the oven.

Bake for 30-40 minutes until toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean.

Once the brownies were cooled down, I used 3 different heart shaped cookie cutters to cut out the heart shapes and added some sugar sprinkles. We had these adorable artificial dye-free sprinkles left over from Aubrey’s recent birthday party and they made an adorable, festive addition to these Valentine’s Day Heart Brownies. I hope you enjoy this special treat and enjoy my friend’s recipes on this Valentine’s Day dessert blog hop.