Sour Cherry and Dark Chocolate Brownies
My mum used to make brownies every Guy Fawkes with bits of chopped Apricots or sometimes raisins in.
They were so good. Chocolate and apricot is a heavenly combination, which we sometimes extrapolated to include dark chocolate dipped apricots, but when I told my dried-fruit-sceptical boyfriend about these brownies, he wasn’t convinced. ‘I could understand cherries,’ he said ‘But raisins in brownies is just…. weird.’
And so here we are: dark chocolate, gooey brownies with sharp, sour cherries.
Sour Cherry and Dark Chocolate Brownies
Ingredients
200g unsalted butter
200g dark chocolate
3 tbsp cocoa powder
90g plain flour
4 medium eggs
300g caster sugar
125g dried sour cherries
roasting tin (21cmx30cm or thereabouts)
baking parchment
Method
Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/Gas 4 and line your tin with a nice big bit of parchment.
Melt the chocolate and butter in a small saucepan and leave to cool.
Sift the plain flour and cocoa powder into a medium bowl and mix together.
In another bowl, whisk the eggs and the sugar together until doubled in size, pale, frothy and much thicker. If you get a trail from your whisks on the top of the mixture that stays for a second or two, you’re there - this could take a good five minutes of whisking or more.
Fold the cooled chocolate and butter into the aerated eggs using a large, metal spoon. Try not to stir, but instead use a figure of 8 pattern and scoop the chocolate until dispersed evenly with the eggs. *
Now fold in your flour and cocoa powder using the same motion, until your mixture is evenly dispersed and all the dry ingredients have been fully incorporated.
Stir the sour cherries into the mixture and then pour the mixture into your prepared tin. Give it a wiggle and a tap to spread it evenly and pop it in the oven.
Cook for 25-30 minutes and check by pulling out and trying a knife in the centre. The top should have a lovely, papery layer to it and the knife should come out clean. If you’re not there yet, return to the oven and check after five minutes.
* (There are some great videos and tips online about how to fold if you’re not sure - the idea is not to knock out all of the air you just put into your mixture, by stirring it willy nilly!)
