Chocolate Orange Brownies

Back to baking and back to blogging! It has been a fair while since I felt the urge to blog, but now my small person is two (how has that happened so fast) I'm finding more time and head space to take up some of my old hobbies. I have always loved baking and seeing how people react when they see my creations, and now photography is a growing love - I'm not all that good at taking photos but with practice I will get there.

So today, for my welcome back bake I have Chocolate Orange Brownies, so so tasty but orange is a flavour which divides opinions quite strongly. I personally love a Terry's chocolate orange and these form part of the base of this bake. And an extra sprinkle of orange zest complements these dark chocolate brownies perfectly and I can't wait to take them to a meet up tomorrow with friends and share them around.

Ingredients:

150g dark chocolate
125g sharing pack of Terrys chocolate orange
200g unsalted butter
3 large eggs
275g caster sugar
40g cocoa powder
100g plain flour
Zest of 1 orange
125g sharing pack of Terrys chocolate orange chopped for sprinkling in the brownie mix

Method:

Preheat your over to 180C and line a 9" baking tray with baking parchment.

Place the dark chocolate, one park of chocolate orange and the butter in a heat proof bowl and either melt over a pan of hot water or in the microwave in short bursts until fully melted. Leave to cool whilst you complete the next step.

Place the eggs and sugar in a bowl and whisk together - I use my KitchenAid as I can turn it onto speed 5ish and leave for around 5 minutes, but you can use an electric whisk as well. You want to get a lot of air whipped in at this stage, so you will need to keep going until the mixture has about doubled in volume and a trail of mixture stays for a couple of seconds before disappearing.

Slowly pour in the cooled chocolate (I pour this down the inside edge of the bowl to avoid deflating the mixture) and very gently fold this in. It will take a good few minutes to do this gently - you don't want to loose any of the air you beat in during the previous stage.

Once the chocolate is completely combined sift over the cocoa powder and flour. Again, gently fold this into the mixture then once combined add the zest of the orange and chopped chunks of extra chocolate orange.

Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 35-40 minutes. My oven takes a little longer to bake these, so check after 30 minutes. You want the middle to not be wobbly and a skewer to come out mostly clean when poked.

Leave to cool completely in the tin before slicing up and enjoying :)

Comments

Pasteils de nata - custard tarts

Pastry week on the Great British Bake Off saw Paull Hollywood set custard tarts as the technical challenge and I thought I would give them a go, seeing as I have never attempted them before! I own Paul's cookbook which has the recipe in, and it can also be found on the GBBO website. These two recipes vary slightly - in the book Paul doesn't make the rough puff pastry but uses shop bought (which I would normally do.) This being a Bake Off challenge though I decided to use the recipe they followed in the tent. The result - delicious buttery pastry filled with golden creamy custard. I ate 3 in one sitting! The tarts are quite fiddly and leaving the pastry to cool between rolling is essential to get the decent lamination and signature swirl on the bottom, so you will need to set aside a good couple of hours in total. As a side note, I found that I had a lot of left over custard - either I didn't make my tarts big enough or the recipe is rather generous with the por...

After Eight minis by Fantasy Cakes

Father Christmas clearly knows me well, as under the tree I had a new cake recipe book waiting; Fantasy Cakes by Angela Romeo and it is such a treat for the eyes to browse, and stomach for the wonderful cakes you could bake. It is a very clever book in that it has the standard cake recipes at the start which are used throughout the book. These so far have been so simple to throw together, which is very handy as I can leave the baby playing for 10 minutes to whip the cake up. You can order the book here , and I highly recommend it if you want to try some beautiful centre pieces or show stoppers. The first cake I tried is the After Eight minis, great as all the family were round to gobble up the end result. This After Eight recipe took a while to assemble and create the individual elements however they can all be done in advance and individually rather than sitting down for a good couple of hours stretch. I had to alter the recipe slightly as I ran out of self raising fl...

BBC Good Food Caramel Brownies

Another get together with friends has prompted some more baking (whilst the baby is sleeping) and the salted caramel cover recipe from a BBC Good Food issue from a while back caught my eye. I have been storing this recipe waiting for a good excuse to bake it, and I can say (after scoffing a few), these brownies do not disappoint and will be made again. Brownies are very easy to make, the one stumbling point I often find is the temperature of the oven and the time they are baked for - as ovens vary vastly this is quite hard to write into a recipe, but I have a fan assisted fairly new over which bakes quite hot. They key for baking the brownies is checking after the stated time, and they should still be a little liquid in the middle if you want moist squishy squares. Leaving them to cool completely in the tin is also an essential, as if they are cut too early they may still be too liquid. Time to make batter - around 15 minutes Baking time - 35 minutes depending on your oven I...

Freckled Kirsty

Search This Blog