black sesame olive oil brownies !
a dessert i will actually make
I come from a brownie household. Boxed brownies made just right are my mother’s signature dessert, her signature dish period. Her trick is underbaking them by two minutes and then refrigerating them, for the perfect chewy-fudgy texture. A cakey brownie is a brownie I will not eat.
For a long time I only ate the edges. When my mother would make a batch of brownies for my older sibling’s sports games, I’d come home from school to a kitchen empty but for the chocolate outline of a nine by thirteen pan on the counter: here was my treat, all the edges cut off and saved for me. Call it modeling care, call it spoiling me. One of the earliest kitchen memories I have is a flash of being three or four or five, standing on a chair at the counter next to my mother. She always let us lick the bowl, but for some reason this time she offered me the spoon before tipping the batter into the pan. For some reason I did not have a shirt on. After she turned her back I smeared it all over myself, the cool thick sweet goo covering my torso and sticking my hands. When she turned back around, or came back into the room, she picked me up and deposited me into the bathtub, both of us cackling. It is, perhaps, my favorite story.
I was recently talking to my friend Ben about baking, how I never do it because I don’t have enough prep space in my apartment. I feel like baking recipes used to just call for one bowl, maybe two, he said, and now they’re all asking for three. Yes! I was validated: It wasn’t me, it was the recipes. I was but a simple woman, raised on one-bowl brownies. Even cookies are too much work for me—all that portioning and rolling. I’ll poke at a soup for two hours but somehow a multi-step baked good is too much toil.1
I was late, then, to Yossy Arefi’s Snacking Cakes, which was something of a pandemic sensation. People are fanatical about this book! And for some reason I never picked it up, perhaps because of some mental block about baking. Her follow-up, Snacking Bakes, came out last fall, and finally I was ready for it, asked a publicist very nicely for a copy, and have kept it on the top of my Cookbook Pile for the last five months. There is this thing in there that’s basically one long flat chocolate chip cookie that you break up like bark!, which I think is just genius. But when I saw the triple-chocolate olive oil brownies, I once again felt that comforting swoon of familiarity, as if Proust’s madeleine were in fact unbaked, a thick smear of cocoa and sugar and flour and nonhydrogenated vegetable oil finger painted across his mommy-loving child torso.2 As with all of the recipes in Arefi’s Snacking books3, it calls for one bowl. The only other surface you dirty is a cutting board to chop chocolate, which I promise is worth it. Chips would be fine, but not the same.
I have made this recipe maybe six times now, which is a lot for me. There is something special about revisiting a recipe so often that you develop a true elemental familiarity with it. I always want to have this sort of relationship with more recipes—it’s how imagine Nora Ephron cooking. You know, the sort of woman who has her salmon recipe, her chicken recipe, her roast, her little salads. Her repertoire. Maybe in my 40s. For now I have these brownies, which are the only recipe that matches the fudgy depths of my mother’s. The olive oil is a gentle presence, the chopped chocolate creating tiny ubiquitous pockets of melt. The flaky salt makes a case for itself. As written the recipe is perfect, which means it is perfect for riffing.
Because of the whole chia pudding thing I am always keeping cacao nibs around. This makes me laugh because it feels very 2011, but I love their fruitiness and their crunch. I like to grab a fat handful and scatter them over the brownies, before the salt. They add texture and, for a bit of rococo flair, a fourth kind of chocolate.
I was recently at a Shoppy Shop and purchased for myself a jar of Rooted Fare’s crunchy black sesame butter. I am a sucker for anything black sesame, and have begun spooning this into my yogurt bowls4. Oh it is so earthy alluring and GOOD! And, as you may have guessed, I’ve glumped it into my brownie batter, beneath the existing sprinkle of nibs and salt. It makes for a pleasantly monochrome effect—you almost can’t see the black sesame bits when the brownies come out, and I love a stealth baked good. I recently tried scattering some coconut flakes on top, another friendly addition.5 One thing I love about brownies is that you can try sprinkling on something new to half the pan, or one little corner. Another trick I learned from my mother, who will sometimes cover half the pan with pecans. I hate nuts on my brownies, so I don’t do this, but the concept has stuck. What other baked good offers this plucky sense of experimentation in every batch? Riddle me that.
Here, then, are my favorite brownies that do not come from a box. Stash them in the fridge or, as Yossy does, in the freezer. If you can’t find/don’t want black sesame paste6 or cacao nibs, just make the brownies without them, and see if you don’t make another batch next week.
Black Sesame Olive Oil Brownies
Adapted from Yossy Arefi’s Snacking Bakes; makes one 8x8-inch pan
3/4 cup (143g) mild-tasting olive oil
1 1/2 cups (300g) granulated sugar
3/4 cup (68g) Dutch process cocoa powder, sifted if lumpy
3/4 teaspoons fine sea salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 large eggs, cold from the fridge
3/4 cup (96g) all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (85g) chopped bittersweet chocolate
1/2 cup (85g) chopped semisweet chocolate
2 heaping tablespoons black sesame butter or black sesame paste
A handful of cacao nibs
Flaky sea salt
Unsweetened, untoasted coconut flakes (optional)
Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350°F. Coat an 8x8-inch baking pan with cooking spray or brush with oil. Line the pan with a strip of parchment paper that hangs over two of the sides. Spray or oil the parchment paper.
In a large bowl, whisk together the olive oil, sugar, cocoa, fine sea salt, and vanilla. The mixture will seize a bit, but keep whisking until the mixture is well combined and no lumps in the cocoa remain, about 30 seconds.
Add the eggs and whisk vigorously until smooth and glossy, about 30 seconds.
Fold in the flour with a spatula and mix until a few streaks of flour remain. Add the chopped chocolates, reserving a few tablespoons to sprinkle on the top.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Spoon small globs of the black sesame butter/paste over the batter. Sprinkle the reserved chocolate, then the cacao nibs, then a big pinch of flaky salt on top. Add a generous handful of coconut, if you like. By now you will get the sense that you can basically put anything you want on these brownies, and you’ll be right.
Bake the brownies until set and slightly firm with a few cracks on top, 33 to 38 minutes.
Let the brownies cool in the pan on a rack, then use the parchment paper to lift the brownies out of the pan and cut into small squares. Store in an airtight container in the fridge or at room temperature.
My exception to this rule is Sohla El-Waylly’s Pretzel and Potato Chip Moon Pies, a laborious and alchemical process that results in such a delightful product that I would go to the end of the earth—or at least dirty like ten things—for it.
I think every food blogger should get one “proust’s madeleine” mention per career. This is mine, if I do it again please heckle me
She is also the author of Sweeter Off the Vine, a fruit dessert cookbook that I LOVE. I think of Yossy as the queen of galettes, and this is proof.
My current combo is chia pudding + plain siggis + whatever chocolate granola + raspberries + chia pudding + a few restrained globs of black sesame butter (too much and it can overwhelm)
I’d considered candied ginger, because I have it around, but worried that might be gilding the lily, even if chopped up very fine. Maybe next week.
You can find plenty of versions online; I like the Rooted Fare version because it’s crunchy thanks to breadcrumbs (random but good), and smooth thanks to peanut butter (stable). But you can also just get regular degular sesame paste, like this kind from umami insider (great name).
The malt variation of these in the book is my house brownie
Brownie edges and corners are *the* best.