Cherry and Hazelnut Brownies

The cherry and hazelnut brownies are one of our family favourites. We have made them at least four times. They are rich in chocolate and they are based on Jamie Oliver’s great recipe ‘Bloomin’ Brilliant Brownies‘ – you can find Jamie’s recipe online HERE.

The main ingredients are your usual brownie staples: 200g of chocolate, 250g of unsalted butter, 80g of cocoa powder, 1 tp of baking powder, 360g of caster sugar and 65g of plain flour.

Our important changes to his recipe is we use 100g of dark chocolate and 100g of milk chocolate to balance out the richness. We also added 50g of hazelnuts for a bit of crunch. Also, we added chopped dried cherries – 75g. Finally, we added cherry flavouring – just 7 drops – because we didn’t want it to be over-intensely cherry.

Brownie making time

Take a look at our cherry flavouring – from the ‘Foodie Flavours‘ range from Lakeland. This was £3.99. I know it sounds like a lot of money, but you don’t need to use much and it lasts for a long time, so you can put it in a lot of things you can make. I am going to try it in some butter cream next.

We baked it for a little bit less than the recipe said (23 minutes and it said 25), so that it had a gooey middle – like every brownie should!

The finished product

We added an edible gold dusting over the top (smeared over is the best way to do it). This looks good and makes it stand out. Someone special is going to get some of it as a surprise, so the gold is for a special occasion!

Christmas Chocolates

This Christmas I made chocolates for my family. Take a look at the finished product!

The chocolate making process:

1. First, chop up the chocolate into rough pieces (a 100g bar of good quality white and milk chocolate – Menier chocolate patissier), then put them into a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Make sure the bowl is not touching the water. Give it a stir, but not too much.
2. Heat the chocolate to 50 to 55 degrees Celsius. You’ll need a thermometer.
3. When it gets to the temperature, take the bowl off the heat – keep stirring until it gets down to 30 – 32 degrees.
4. Put the chocolates into silicone moulds. Flatten with a spatula. There are lots of different moulds available, but I chose stars and flowers. Make sure the moulds are deep if you want to put nuts in. I chose pistachios and hazelnuts as they were small enough. You don’t need to put in nuts – it is your opinion.
5. Chill the chocolate in the fridge. Keep checking until they are nice and hard and don’t feel soft.
6. Finally, pop out the chocolates from the silicone moulds. Then you spray or colour the chocolates with glitter. The pink colour is a glitter spray that goes well with the white chocolate, whereas the gold glitter went well with the milk chocolate (I had to dab on the gold glitter).
7. I had ten of each chocolates.

I hope you enjoy making them if you get the chance.

Freya :0)