Chocolate Hazelnut Brownies

Happy Easter Everyone! I've been asked by my friend Ebony for a brownie recipe this morning. Whilst I am still working on mine, I did try these last week for a picnic. I chose the recipe purely for the crackled shiny crust which is so pretty but it was also a fine tasting brownie! It is a recipe from Signe Johanson's Scandinavian food blog - see here 

Makes 12 brownies

• 125g butter
• 75g cocoa powder
• 175g chocolate-hazelnut spread
• 2 whole medium eggs
• 1 medium egg yolk
• 150g icing sugar
• 50g flour
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• ¼ tsp salt
• optional for a deeper flavour: 1 shot espresso (purists will scoff at this though)
• 50g halved or chopped toasted hazelnuts, also optional

Preheat the oven to 150 C. Line a 15 cm x 30 cm brownie tin or a 20 cm x 20 cm square baking tin with two sheets of baking parchment, lined perpendicularly. This makes it easier to remove the brownies from the tin after they’ve been baked.

Melt the butter and add the cocoa powder along with the chocolate hazelnut spread. Stir to mix together and set aside while you assemble the rest. In a medium bowl place the eggs and icing sugar, lightly whisk with a fork or whisk to break up the eggs and mix the sugar in but don’t whisk until fluffy. Add the chocolate-hazelnut butter mixture, stirring so that this incorporates with the egg and sugar mixture. Add the flour, vanilla extract and salt (and coffee and/or hazelnuts if using) and stir a few more times. It should look like a very dark, treacle-y mixture.

Pour this into the prepared tin and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 20-22 minutes. If you bake the brownies in a 20 x 20 cm tin they will be a fraction thicker than in the longer rectangular tin so they may need 2-3 minutes longer to bake through. The brownies will be quite thin, only 1 inch or so thick so they don’t need much baking time but keep checking after 18 minutes. It’s always better to slightly underbake brownies as they cool in the tin after you remove them from the oven and this extends the baking process. Also the chocolate flavour is more intense if you don’t bake the brownies all the way through.

Allow to cool completely before slicing.