Fudgy Brownie Bites

This week has just been awful. Like serious worst kind of week you can have awful. I won’t go into many specifics but I will give you this: Monday: wisdom teeth removal, Tuesday: prescription med fail, Monday-present: inability to look normal while eating, Thursday: I’m the reason my blueberry is in the hospital and a tree lost a good chunk of it’s bark.
Yeah…this has definitely been a really tough and miserable week. But it’s getting better, just really, really slowly.  

Anyways enough with bad things (I think I tend to talk a lot about negative stuff on here. Please forgive me, I’m really an upbeat person, honest!) let’s talk about brownies shall we?

These brownies intrigued me when I saw them on The Baker Chick run by Audra. They aren’t normal brownies for two reasons: 1. They are made in little mini muffin tins, so they are in cute bite-sized portions and 2. The tops are sprinkled with sea salt.

I’ve always heard of people saying they love the combination of salty and sweet, especially when it comes to caramel. Apparently salted caramel is the way to go. I myself have never had sweet treats topped with salt, and now I know why. I do not like the flavor at all. It’s too, for lack of a better word, salty. While I ate the brownie bites I felt that I was also eating sea water. Besides the salty taste, and the fact that I couldn’t really chew, the brownie bites were actually very good, and very fudgy (just how I like my brownies).

I ended up making these a second time, this time without the sea salt, and they were much better I thought. To each their own, I guess. What’s your stance on salty/sweet foods? Would you rather have a little coating of salt on top of your treats or do you leave well enough alone?

Fudgy Brownie Bites

Slightly adapted from The Baker Chick
Makes 12 brownie bites

Ingredients
½ stick unsalted butter, cubed
½ cup sugar
¼ cup unsweetened natural cocoa powder, sifted
1 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1/8 tsp. vanilla extract
1 egg, cold
3 tbsp. unbleached all-purpose flour
1/8 tsp. salt
Sea salt (optional)

Directions
Preheat an oven to 325 F. Grease a mini muffin tin; set aside.

Place butter in a bowl over simmering water (a make-shift double-boiler). When the butter starts to melt, add the sugar, cocoa powder, and chopped chocolate. The mixture will clump together but beat and stir until it starts to loosen and become liquidy. The batter should be dark and glossy, but slightly granular. Remove the bowl from the simmering water and set aside to cool slightly. Stir in the vanilla extract. Beat in the egg until completely incorporated. The batter should now look a little smoother.

Fold in the flour and salt. Keep folding until the batter has just come together, careful not to over mix. The end result should be very thick, dark, fudgy batter. Use a small cookie scoop to evenly distribute the batter into the mini muffin cups. If you are going to use sea salt, sprinkle it over the tops now.

Place muffin tray on the lower third rack and bake for 15-17 minutes or until you insert a toothpick in the middle of a brownie bite and it comes out with just a few crumbs. Remove from the oven and place on a rack to cool for 5-10 minutes. Place the muffin tray in the freezer for about 5-7 minutes. This will help in the release of the brownie bites, trust me.

Serve and enjoy!