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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 :)


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