chocolate

Chocolate and Pistachio Brownies

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chocolate & pistachio brownies

It’s been a long time between brownie recipes, hasn’t it? I think the most recent effort was back in June with a good but very sweet batch.

This recipe comes originally from The City of London Cook Book (a book that sounds pretty cool to me!) but I actually found it on the UK Marie Claire site.

Before starting on this I was a bit nervous because of the HUGE amount of sugar involved (brace yourselves – it’s in excess of 500g). However, as I was baking these brownies for a BBQ I figured I wasn’t going to have to eat too many of these myself.

Begin my melting 255g of dark chocolate with 255g of unsalted butter (as always, this happened in the microwave). I omitted the vanilla essence – I’ve decided it’s pointless in chocolate brownies.

Add 280g of caster sugar and 280g of soft brown sugar to the chocolate and butter mix and melt again (also in the microwave for me – but now you’ve added the sugar be sure to be extra vigilant!).

After this stage, I transferred the mixture to the KitchenAid and added the 5 eggs, one at a time, beating well between each egg. If your chocolate mixture is quite warm I’d allow it to cool a little before adding the eggs – you don’t want them scrambling!

Once the eggs are well incorporated, add 280g of plain flour, 2 tsp of baking powder and a pinch of salt. Mix well before gently mixing through 80g of (shelled, and NOT salted) pistachios.

Pour the mixture into a base lined tin and baked in an oven preheated to 170°C (conventional, not fan) for 30-45 minutes. The top should be crisp, the cake mixture shouldn’t be wobbly, but a toothpick inserted should come out a bit cakey. You most definitely don’t want dry brownies.

Allow to cool in the tin (they will collapse a little) before cutting and serving.

These were a big hit – and were rated almost as good as the exceedingly popular caramel brownies. By “almost as good” I mean that there was no audible complaining about a different recipe.  I thought these brownies had a much better crust and they were super fudgy – no doubt due to all that sugar.

What’s also great is that even though there’s a relatively small amount of pistachio in this recipe, the flavour really goes through the whole brownie, giving it quite an exotic twist.

This is most definitely a brownie recipe I will revisit – but only when baking for a larger number of people.

Of course – you can check out the full brownie collection if you need more inspiration.

Father’s Day – Dolce & Co Dad’s Indulgence

- Alex 2 Comments

This year Andy announced he was expecting a Father’s Day present and, miraculously, I thought of something hilarious for our 21 month old to ‘buy’ him and it arrived yesterday.

However, it’s possible you are not so organised (I am only crowing because usually it is me flapping around at the last minute – you’d think Christmas was a new thing every year!) but you might be lucky and be able to snaffle one of Dolce & Co’s Dad’s Indulgence Chocolate Box.

The box costs $30 and consists of three treats for dad: the Cigar (a crunchy praline centre wrapped in chocolate ganache), Le Café Noir (an espresso and dark chocolate cake) and After Eight (milk chocolate macarons with a touch of mango).

Boxes are available for collection today (Friday) and tomorrow (Saturday 1 September). Dolce & Co is accepting limited orders so if you’re interested you’ll have to get on to it pronto. Telephone 8410 3633 or visit the shop at 45 Gilbert Street, Adelaide.

Dolce & Co has been on my ‘to do’ list for a while so I’d suggest dropping into the shop anyway, and checking it out for yourself!

Chocolate Pudding Recipe

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Jamie Oliver's Chocolate Puddings

I was looking around for a chocolate pudding recipe and when I found this one by Jamie Oliver I thought I’d give it a go, because it has the bonus of being gluten free. As you may know, despite living a very gluten filled life myself, I’m always on the look out for gluten free recipes, because I have a few relatives who are either coeliac or avoid gluten.

This recipe has also been posted relatively recently over at Just as Delish. If you’re interested in gluten free recipes, or recipes with a healthy slant, check it out.

Jamie’s recipe, originally featured in Jamie’s Kitchen, serves 6. As we were just two (this was originally going to be made for Andy’s birthday, but it took me a while to get organised) I halved things, made three puddings and fed one to my mum for morning tea.

Begin by melting 60g of dark chocolate with 25mL (5 tsp) of strong black coffee (espresso, if you’re in my household!). I did this as usual in the microwave and a burst at 30 seconds on high was long enough to cause the chocolate to seize. As this is a tiny amount of chocolate, with liquid, be very careful if you’re using the microwave. Otherwise, just chop up the chocolate and pour over the piping hot coffee. Pour the mix into small ice cube trays and freeze.

I used 4″ ramekin dishes as my moulds. Jamie tells you to use 3″ pastry rings or dariole moulds. This makes me pretty sceptical about his quantities for this recipe because even though I halved things and was using larger moulds, I still had enough mixture left over to make a generous sized ‘muffin’ of pudding (the fourth ramekin having been broken some time ago!). So, whether you’re halving or making a full batch, make sure you have a couple of extra moulds in reserve!

Butter the moulds well and refrigerate.

Preheat the oven to 190°C (conventional oven, not fan).

To make the sponge, melt 160g of chocolate with 60g of butter (unsalted). When this mixture has cooled, add to it 3 egg yolks, 50g of ground almonds and 50g of rice flour*.

Whisk the 3 egg whites until soft peaks form and then add 100g of caster sugar and beat until stiff. Note – just because you may have used the KitchenAid while the baby is asleep previously, there is a massive difference between making some brownies using the flat beater and vigorously whisking egg whites on full speed …

Fold the egg whites into the chocolate mix and ensure everything is well combined.

Spoon some mixture into a mould, top with a frozen square of chocolate and coffee, and then cover with more mixture.

Bake for 18-20 minutes (if you’re using a larger mould, like me, you may want to extend that by 5 minutes or so). The puddings will puff up a little while baking and should be reasonably firm.

When done, remove from moulds while hot and serve immediately. We served with cream, because, well, if you’re doing pudding, you may as well do it properly.

While these puddings were nice they were … just that. I thought it was a lot of effort to go to for a dish that didn’t really stand out. I disliked the ‘just in time’ nature of the dish – if you were entertaining you’d spend the pause between dinner and dessert in the kitchen making these as there’s so little you can do in advance. Of course, unmoulding anything is always fraught with danger (and, in this case – massive fail – but I think my puddings were slightly underdone) but there’s no harm in serving this dish unmoulded. It looks fine in the ramekin.

There are other Jamie Oliver recipes I return to time and time again (his spinach and feta pie, and also his brilliant cheesecake recipe, which I haven’t yet written about). But this will not be one of them.

* As mentioned once or twice in other places, rice flour is readily available in Australian supermarkets. Just make sure you buy rice flour and NOT ground rice! Also, if you are cooking for people who have a medical issue with gluten, always check that any products like this are gluten free (100% white rice). You’d be surprised at the places where gluten crops up.