Food You Can Eat: Chocolate Cup Brownies with Balsamic Raspberry Sauce

5/4/23 Elliecoo 10

Balsamic Raspberry Sauce Ingredients

This recipe from The Mediterranean Diet Cookbook is just fine . . . but it is no fudge chocolate brownie. And, you need the ice cream to balance the very tart raspberry sauce. Also, this makes two ramekins, so you will need double or triple the recipe for a family-sized dessert. These have the flourless, keto texture which is not a favorite of mine. I won’t make it again because the nutrition facts were high enough that, for the calories, etc., I’d rather have a small square of a real brownie.

Balsamic Raspberry Sauce Ingredients

  • ¼ cup quality balsamic vinegar
  • 1 cup frozen raspberries

Brownies

  • ½ cup black beans
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 4 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
  • ¼ cup sugar
  • ½ teaspoon baking powder
  • Pinch of salt
  • ¼ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Vanilla ice milk or other low-cal ice cream

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 and lightly grease two ramekins.

Puree the beans, egg, olive oil, and vanilla about 2 minutes until very smooth. Add in the cocoa, sugar, baking powder, and salt and puree until mixed. Stir in most of the chocolate chips, spoon into the ramekins, and  sprinkle the remainder of the chips on top. Bake for 15-20 minutes, the center will be soft at the shorter time and more cake-like at the longer time.

Meanwhile, while the brownie is baking, mix the balsamic and raspberries in a sauce pan and bring to a boil, simmering for 15 minutes or until it is reduced to about a half cup.

Serve warm, in the ramekin or turned onto a bowl, topped with sauce and a scoop of ice cream.

Nutrition per serving: These come out to 510 calories with 16g fat, 88g carbs, and 10g protein.

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About Elliecoo 555 Articles
Four dogs, one partner. The dogs win.

10 Comments

  1. I’m stuck on the raspberry/balsamic vinegar sauce. Because I’m slowly losing my mind from over-doctoring and overwork I suspect. So it is neither a raspberry syrup or coulis, because no sugar, nor is it something you’d put on a salad, because it would be too reduced and chunky/syrupy. Do you think it worked with the brownie and ice cream, its tartness aside?

    I think I will try this because any excuse to drag out the ramekins. I was almost sure this was going to be a coffee mug/microwave recipe. Have you tried that, something like a mud cake made this way? I worked with a woman who had hundreds of uses for her coffee mugs and microwave. She was an older woman and she never married, no kids, so she was cooking/microwaving for one. She really should have written her own cookbook. She was also very active in her church, though, so every Saturday she’d bake something that could feed fifty for the coffee hour following the Sunday service, and we office mates were the beneficiaries of any leftovers on Monday.

    Really, anything to divert myself/procrastinate from my latest misbegotten freelance project…

    • It was less than wonderful on so many levels. The second photo shows the sticky texture of the brownie and the grainy texture of the sauce. Don’t waste your lovely ramekins on this . . .

  2. The sauce brought up a chain of mildly traumatic childhood memories. First was the time my uncle, who fancies himself a chef, hosted Easter lunch. He was always experimenting with unusual flavor combos. This being my von Trapp side of the family minus the magical rule breaking Fraulein Maria, us kids had to sit at the table and politely eat in silence for the whole two hours. Everything was offensive to my taste buds but I ploughed through each dish like a good little girl who doesn’t want to bring shame to herself or the family. The only thing keeping me from tears was a bowl of juicy strawberries promised for desert. When I finally brought a piece to my mouth it was covered in balsamic vinegar. I asked to be excused to go to bathroom, where I cried and hyperventilated silently in despair.

     

    That memory seuges to another childhood memory when my father and his friends rented a country house. It was amazing to be out in nature unsupervised as all the adults were getting wasted and doing adult things. My siblings and I pretended we were living in the woods like Peter Pan and the lost boys. We spent hours foraging blackberries. After filling a large salad bowl, we decided to save the blackberries for breakfast the next morning. We put it in the fridge and went to bed. The next morning, we were so excited reap our harvest. The blackberries tasted kind of funny like black licorice. We couldn’t figure out what made them go off like that and kept tasting them to see if it was just a couple or the whole batch. After eating enough to conclude that the whole batch was off, we started to feel flush and lightheaded. Turns out my stepmom and her friends poured a bottle of Ouzo in it and left it to steep overnight. That was the first time I got drunk (age 9). Fucking assholes.

    • Nine-year-old proto-heavy-drinker me would have convinced my fellow Lost Boys that the whole batch was off after the first handful and would have squirreled the berries away to consume at my leisure to take the edge off during a country house vacation.

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