Healthy Tasty Chowcleaner recipes, reviews and food chatter

My mother-in-law makes the best caramel brownies with the caramel sandwiched between two layers of brownie.  Everyone requests them for any type of special occasion and she graciously makes them every single time.  I’ve made them before but they are time-consuming and not at all healthy, so I usually just chow on hers when she makes them!  This past weekend, she made them for my brother-in-law before he goes away for the summer.  As I ravenously munched on one…I realized, I can make this healthy and organic!  Well…healthier anyway.  The original ingredients are: a German chocolate cake mix, a stick of butter, 50 caramels (or a pound), 2/3rds cup evaporated milk, and 1 cup of chocolate chips. 

As I said, the original recipe is delicious but full of processed foods with hydrogenated fats and who knows what else.  For starters, I decided to add some Salba(or chia seeds) to mine to kick up the nutrition.  I borrowed the caramel recipe, consisting of organic honey and organic cream, from 101cookbooks.  I think it tastes better than any store-bought caramels anyway!  This version is dark-chocolatey but sweetened up with the caramel layer, it’s ooey, gooey, and delicious!  If you could see me right now, I’m dancing all over the place.  This is a little time-consuming and messy, but well worth it if you’re able to come up with the time.  I think I’m in caramel brownie heaven.

Ingredients:

• 15-16 oz bag of bitter-sweet chocolate chips.  I used Ghiradelli 60%
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 1/2 tsp stevia
• 5 Tb ground Salba or Chia seeds, I grind mine in the coffee grinder, but buying them pre-ground would’ve been less messy
• 1/2 cup of firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 Tb vanilla
• 1/2 cup almond flour, packed
• 1/4 cup brown rice flour (or, instead of almond and brown rice, use 3/4 cup of whatever flour/flour mix you like…using coconut flour you’ll have to add lots more eggs.)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 cup heavy cream (for caramel)
• 1 cup honey (for caramel)
• 1/2 tsp salt (for caramel)

Method:

• Click here for instructions on how to make the caramel.   …make caramel.  The caramel cools while you’re putting together the brownie ingredients so you may not need to put it over ice.  I did not.  I let mine get to 230 degrees and took it off the heat -I didn’t want the caramel to harden quite as much as if it were to be on an apple.  If you want less caramel, you can just use whatever ratio you prefer (3/4 cup cream to 3/4 cup honey, 1/2 cup to 1/2 cup)
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease 9×13″ pan
• In a saucepan, melt butter and chocolate chips over medium, remove from heat when melted.  Add Salba, brown sugar, stevia, salt, vanilla and applesauce.
• mix together brown rice flour, almond flour and baking soda 
• Make sure the chocolate mixture is not too warm, then add eggs, easiest to use a fork or a whisk to get them incorporated
• Add flour mixture, stir well
• Pour half of the brownie mixture into pan.  To be on the cautious side, pour a little less than half.  Put in the oven and bake 6-7 minutes
• Remove from oven and allow to cool a couple of minutes
• Pour caramel mixture into the pan, spread it around to cover bottom brownie layer completely
• Slowly piece together pieces of the brownie batter and flatten it and put on top of the caramel.  It’s more like a spoonful at a time, slowly making sure that all of the caramel is as covered as you can get it.  I was able to cover up all of the caramel 
• Put in oven and cook another 18-20 minutes
• Allow to cool completely, if you’re impatient like me, I put mine in the fridge to cool off.  These are too good to wait for!

If you don’t have Chia seeds or Salba, I think you can probably just omit it.  Here are a few resources if you’d like to read more about the health benefits.  Just hover over the word:  Salba brand, some chia info,  this one quotes Oprah’s Dr. Oz…of course, they’re touting their product, and here’s a not-so-biased information set.

…A note on the chocolate.  As we all know by now, dark chocolate is better for you than milk chocolate.  I find the darkest chocolate too bitter, I can comfortably go up to 63% where I think it tastes the best, but much more darkness and my enjoyment factor is gone.  If you can go darker, do it in this recipe!  If you don’t like it at all, just use milk  chocolate chips or semi-sweet, which are sweeter than 63% or bittersweet.  I had a good time one day about 8 years ago buying all kinds of percentages of fancy chocolate and having my own little taste test.  If you’re not sure what you like best, try that out!

I got my inspiration to make these from ElanasPantry blog.  If you have have an aversion to gluten or just want some more healthy recipe ideas, I think her blog is amazing.  She makes some wonderful, dark chocolate flourless brownies.  At first I made her version, which I found delicious but a little too dark-chocolatey for me.  I love dark chocolate (I do prefer 60 some percent to higher), but not everyone likes dark chocolate and so I wanted to make something that everyone would walk by and have a bite, rather than just myself walking by and taking a bite and then finishing the whole pan.  Oops!  Sound familiar? 

Recipe:

• 16oz salted almond butter, smooth roasted.  (the cheapest almond butter I found was MaraNatha at Costco, it’s also a good brand regardless for spreading on sandwiches, etc…)
• 2 eggs or 3 egg whites or 1 egg/2whites - they all work out, depends on what you want for nutrition vs. calories that day
• 1 1/4 cups agave nectar light or amber (the cheapest I found this was the larger Madhava brand at Whole Foods…not at our local Costco yet!)
• 1 Tb vanilla extract
• 1/3 heaping cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda (not heaping, can go a little under a teaspoon as well here for a little more fudginess)
• 1 cup 62% semi-sweet chocolate chips.  I used a whole package of Scharffen Berger chocolate chunks cut into smaller pieces
• 1/2 heaping cup hazelnuts, roasted, then chopped

1. Pre-heat oven to 325 and grease 9×13 glass baking dish.
2. Roast hazelnuts 10-15 minutes - my oven seems to cook everything fast so check at about 7 minutes - if you can smell it, the huskss are coming off, and they look golden brown, they’re done.  Remove from sheet and set on towel to cool.  Either use the towel to remove husks or go with it, chop up the hazelnuts and remove random husks as you see fit. 
3. In a large bowl, blend almond butter until smooth with a hand blender.
4. Add eggs then blend, add agave and vanilla, then blend, add cocoa, salt and baking soda, then blend.
5. Fold in chocolate chips and hazelnuts.
6. Pour batter into 9×13 baking dish.
7. Bake for 30-40 minutes.  My oven is exactly 28 minutes. 

The baking time on this recipe is pretty crucial for fudgy brownies, so watch carefully as it nears 30 minutes.  The first time I made Elana’s version, I checked it at 26 minutes, not close to done, so I let it go for five more minutes and then it was slightly over-done.  Not really fudgy and slightly more dry and cake-ish.  If you think it’s not close to done but the edges are looking pretty done, check in another 2 minutes and it may surprise you and be cooked perfectly!

I think these brownies are amazing - and with agave nectar rather than sugar, and almond butter rather than flour- you have a much lower glycemic index brownie that tastes even better than your original fudge brownie.  My favorite part about them is that usually after eating brownies, I crave more and more and never seem to get full.  With these, you eat a little bit and then actually feel satisfied rather than craving more.  But, go ahead and eat more because they’re pretty good for you!  Obviously they’re not mixed vegetables, but you get the picture I hope.