This Easter, I chose this Diana Henry recipe which I'd seen in the Telegraph only recently, for brownies made with rye flour and studded with chocolate chunks and hazelnuts. It wasn't the main dessert, but it would have caused an uproar if there wasn't something containing chocolate available after our Easter dinner. As it happened, the brownies weren't eaten at the meal, but both children were happy to take some home with them.
The recipe differs slightly from the usual method of making brownies, where the butter and chocolate are melted together before stirring in the sugar and eggs, then the flour and any other ingredients. This recipe is more like a standard cake recipe - the butter and sugar are whisked together until light, then the eggs are beaten in before the melted chocolate is added, followed by the rest of the ingredients being folded in. The only change I made to the recipe was that I only used 50g of hazelnuts - forgot to check the storecupboard! I used a 20cm square tin, and wouldn't advise using anything larger, despite what the recipe says, unless you like really thin brownies.
Aide memoir, in case the recipe disappears:
200g plain chocolate, half melted, half chopped
150g softened butter
275g light muscovado sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
100g rye flour, sifted with 2 tablespoons cocoa
75g toasted hazelnuts, halved or roughly chopped.
Bake - 180C for 30 minutes.
The whole batch of brownies only contained 100g of melted chocolate, but they were surprisingly dense and fudgy. The extra chocolate chips and coarsely chopped hazelnuts added texture, and the brownies had that nice papery crust that all good brownies should have! I'm not sure that I could taste the rye flour as a specific flavour, but I'm guessing it contributed to the dense texture! Definitely a recipe to use again.
It's always good to have a new recipe for brownies, and I like the idea of using rye flour. They look very moreish.
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