I made brownies for an office lunch last night, using a recipe from my mom that I’ve made dozens of times.  As I was mixing up the ingredients, I saw the coarse sea salt on my counter, and thought, what the heck, salt is salt, right?  And I used a teaspoon of that instead of table salt.

And guess what?  The brownies tasted salty.  It was exactly a teaspoon (I measured), and if anything the amount of salt used would have been slightly less than usual because coarse salt packs less tightly than fine granular salt.  But the difference in taste was really pronounced.  Not bad, but definitely different.

They reminded me of a salted caramel cupcake I had at a bakery once.  It was a chocolate cupcake with caramel filling and chocolate buttercream frosting on top.  The salty caramel was a nice contrast with the sweetness of the frosting and cake.  I felt the same about these brownies.  I frosted them with chocolate buttercream before I knew they were salty, and the brownies weren’t overly sweet, even though they had super sweet frosting on top.

Who knew salt could make such a difference?

Here’s the brownie recipe, if you’re interested.  It’s just a basic brownie recipe, probably like the one you use all the time.

4 oz unsweetened chocolate

2/3 cup butter

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/4 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

chopped nuts if desired

Melt the chocolate and butter together.  Cool a little, then stir in the sugar, eggs, vanilla, baking powder, and salt.  Add the flour last, followed by the nuts.  Bake at 350 degrees for 28-30 minutes in a 9 x 13” pan.

And here’s a trick I learned from my friend Sheila.  Line the pan with foil first, and spray with a little cooking spray.  After they bake, lift the foil out of the pan, and voila, nothing to wash!  If you’re icing the brownies, it’s nice to cut the edges off, and put them aside (or eat them as you go), and then cut the brownies.  Sheila actually uses an architect’s tool to cut the brownies into perfect diamonds, but I’m not that talented.  Still, it makes it easier to cut pretty squares if you cut the edges off first.