chocolate cake w/ olive oil and sea salt

One of the great joys of blogging is the down time I have with scoping out new favorite bloggers. Granted I don't get a lot of down time, but when I do my ideal situation: 6pm or 7pm, dishes are done, everyone is fed, jazz on the internet radio--time to look at other food blogs and food writing websites. I get great inspiration from other food blogs; love seeing new photos, new techniques, other bloggers taking some old recipe, jazzing it up with a new twist or several twists. Honestly I get all my inspiration if I come across a really good food photo. For me inspiration starts with the eyes, then the stomach, then seeing if the flavors I want to add in will match/coexist happily. This chocolate cake with olive oil and sea salt was inspired by sprinklebakes.com When I saw that she had done a sea theme by baking the cakes in shells I was hooked. I didn't use seas shells because I wanted to make sure I liked the whole baking sweets with olive oil first. Admittedly I was very skeptical about using olive oil in anything sweet or baking related. Not any more. The olive oil really does pair very nice with dark chocolate. Not sure about milk chocolate, so stick with the 70% (or higher) dark chocolate. The next time I make these I will try them with the sea shells and the added extra touch of drizzling them with a last coat of olive oil before serving.
Have a good Memorial Day weekend everyone! What are you doing?

chocolate cake with sea salt & olive oil
adapted from sprinklebakes.com
print recipe

Cook notes: I wanted to try and make brownie-like cake. See my changes. And I used a chocolate Ganache instead of the chocolate sauce. This is a very moist cake; it was very hard to cut these into perfect little squares for the photo. If you want to make this the original way please visit sprinklebakes.com

Cake:
7oz. dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids)
3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp unsalted butter (14 tbsp. or 1 3/4 US sticks)
4 medium eggs
3/4 cups granulated sugar
Scant 1/2 cup all purpose flour (I used 1 cup flour)
1 1/2 ts baking powder
Extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Brush the entire bottom and sides of a brownie pan (8x8 or 9x9) with generous amount of olive oil; set aside.

Melt chocolate in a heat proof bowl over a pan of simmering water.
Add butter and stir until butter is melted and well combined with the chocolate.
Remove bowl from simmering water and let stand until later needed.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the eggs and sugar together and mix on high speed until mixture turns pale and doubles in volume.
Decrease mixer speed and add the flour a little at a time, then the baking powder.
While mixer is running, pour the chocolate mixture in a thin stream into the egg and sugar mixture.
Mix until well blended. Pour batter into brownie pan
Bake for 25-30 minutes. When cake is done, it will form a brownie-like crust on top and a toothpick tester should come out clean.

(Instead of the chocolate sauce I used a dark chocolate Ganache: 1 cup of dark chocolate melted with 1-2 TB of heavy cream whip until nice & glossy)

Chocolate sauce:
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup half and half
3 TB sugar
2 TB unsalted butter
4 oz. dark chocolate
1 ts vanilla extract

In a medium saucepan, stir together cream, half and half, sugar and butter.
Place pan over medium-high heat and stir to dissolve the sugar and melt butter.
When sugar and butter has melted, add chocolate and whisk until melted and smooth.
Add vanilla extract and whisk again.
Remove from heat. Let the mixture stand for a few minutes and then whisk again.
(This is a good all-purpose chocolate sauce and can be stored in refrigerator for up to two weeks.)

Assembly:
Spoon a small amount of chocolate sauce/or ganache over cake, smoothing it to the edges with the back of a spoon. Lightly sprinkle cakes with sea salt (don't use a heavy hand with this if using coarse salt).
Drizzle cakes with olive oil. (I did not do this)