The Recipe Room

Chocolate Brownies of any description are pretty heavenly.  Rich, moist and gooey!  Eaten warm with ice-cream is always my favourite way to devour them!  Brownies are often made with walnuts, but I want to give you a slightly different idea. 

Almond and apricot chocolate brownies have all the gooey richness of a classic brownie, but they offer a different kind of sweetness and crunch.  You can try experimenting with other fruit and nuts too.  Any variation is good fun to make, and lip-smackingly tasty!  Just be sure not to overcook your brownies, or they will be disappointingly dry.

Also, try this Go Free Chocolate Brownie recipe, which is gluten-free, wheat-free and dairy-free. Perfect for large groups with special dietary needs.

Ingredients:

• 300g good dark chocolate, roughly chopped
• 200g good milk chocolate, roughly chopped
• 220g unsalted butter, left to soften
• 220g light muscovado sugar
• 3 eggs
• 75g self-raising flour
• 100g almonds, roughly chopped
• 75g breakfast apricots, drained, excess juice squeezed out, and roughly torn

Preparation Guidelines:

1. Preheat the oven to 190ºC.  Grease and then line a shallow baking tray with grease-proof paper.
2. Melt the dark chocolate slowly together with the butter in a large saucepan, stirring well.
3. In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs together with the sugar until creamy and light, then stir in the melted dark chocolate.  Once well mixed, add the flour, the almond and apricot pieces, and the roughly chopped milk chocolate.  Combine everything together with a wooden spoon.
4. Spoon the mixture out into the lined baking tray and bake for around 40 mins until the centre of the cake feels firm to the touch but soft directly underneath the surface.  The trick with brownies is never to overcook them. You need to look out for the golden moment, and take them from the oven before they begin to go dry.
5. If you’re not going to eat the brownies straight away, leave the brownie to cool in the tin.  Once cooled, turn it out onto a chopping board and cut it into squares.

Note: If you want to serve some of the brownie hot and fresh, you can remove the part you want from the tray as soon as it is cooked, and serve it in bowls with ice-cream. To make it fruitier, try topping with bits of strawberries and apricots. It will fall apart and be ever-so gooey!  Then you can leave the remainder of the cake to cool in the tray, to cut into servings and store.

Another idea for preparing it to eat hot, is to bake the brownie mix in smaller pots or ramekins to serve straight from the oven with cream and ice-cream.  Or you could even pop a square of brownie in the microwave for a few seconds to warm it at any time.  So many ways to eat a brownie!  Yum!

Time: 20 mins preparation, 45 mins baking

Cocoa Treats: 18 squares

Tags: Almond and Apricot Chocolate Brownies, almonds, apricots, butter, chocolate puddings, chocolate recipes, cocoa treats, dark chocolate, desserts, eggs, flour, milk chocolate, muscovado sugar

This entry was posted on Friday, 15 June, 2012 at 8:48 pm by Christina Warren and is filed under Desserts, Less than 90 mins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed RSS 2.0. You can leave a comment, or make a trackback from your own blog.