Chocolate, Rye and Hazelnut Brownies

It's chocolate season, in case you haven't noticed! There are even articles in such places as the Guardian, suggesting recipes to use up leftover Easter Eggs, as if chocolate was something that has to be used up quickly, while it's still fresh!

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.

Blueberry Jam and Rye Crumble Bars

 Sometimes you read a recipe and know instantly that you want to try it as soon as possible, rather than filing it away as something that you might get round to in the future. I'd be the first to admit that I have a huge file of recipes I might want to use sometime, some of which are several many years old now, and still not tried. I'll also admit that, if  I try a recipe quickly, then it's more likely to become an established part of my repertoire, providing it works out well.

This recipe, published in the Telegraph less than two weeks ago is a good example of acting quickly. I didn't have raspberry or gooseberry jam, as recommended, but I did have a blueberry conserve with extra fruit, which I was sure would have a similar tartness.

I've made lots of oaty sandwich bars where the lower and upper layers of dough are made from the same basic mixture, but here each layer is quite different - it means a bit extra work, but it's well worth the effort. The base is a shortbread made with rye and wheat flour and dark brown sugar, and the crumble topping is made with mainly oats,  plus small quantities of both flours and light brown sugar. I followed the instructions for a clumpy crumble and refrigerated the topping for a while. It then needed crumbling to the right consistency to sprinkle over the base and jammy layer.

This all worked very well to produce a delicious crumble bar - Hubs described it as a portable fruit crumble, which is his favourite hot dessert, so I think he liked it! The jam was very fruity and still quite runny even after baking - I thought it might set more solidly after 45 minutes in the oven, but it kept it's soft-set consistency. This lead to the bars being quite fragile, so I think that next time I will make them in a slightly smaller tin (20cm square instead of 23cm) so that a thicker base will make them a little sturdier and easier to handle. Otherwise, no complaints!