Easy To Make Chocolate Brownies

Sourced from Chocablog

Guest Author Ben Dillon of Harry’s Rocky Road shares one of his favourite recipes – Chocolate Brownies.

What You'll Need
140g unsalted butter
200g dark chocolate
200g light muscovado sugar or brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
3 eggs
85g plain flour
75g walnuts, lightly toasted, chopped
Sifted cocoa powder or icing sugar, to dust

Method To Savour
Preheat the oven to 160°C. Grease and line the base of an 18cm square cake pan. Place the butter and chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water (don’t let the bowl touch water). When butter and chocolate have melted – making a gorgeously shiny smooth mix – remove from heat and allow to cool slightly.

Beat with a wooden spoon the sugar, vanilla and a good pinch of salt into the chocolate/butter mixture. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, and then add flour, beating until smooth. Now you should have a thick, rich looking mix that makes you want to eat it straight from the bowl. But don’t do that.

Fold in the walnuts and pour the thick, rich mixture into the pan, smoothing the top. Bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out with a few moist crumbs attached (not sticky batter).

Allow to cool, then turn onto a wire rack and peel off lining paper. Eat straight from the tin with a spoon… Or cut into 12 neat squares and dust with cocoa powder or icing sugar before serving… Or Ice Cream or Whipped Cream…

These Brownies will keep for 2-3 days in an airtight container in the fridge or they can be frozen for up to 2 months – if they will last that long. This is a pretty hardy recipe – one that you can experiment with to suit your own taste buds – leave out the walnuts – add in dried cranberries or white chocolate chips or hazelnuts or milk chocolate chunks or coffee beans or I could go on forever.

But what suits my taste buds you ask? On my second go at this recipe, I went for Lindt Excellence 70% Dark Chocolate to make a wicked Brownie mix and replaced the nuts with cut up chunks of Lindt Excellence Coffee Intense – mmm…