The Hairy Biker’s chocolate brownies

One of the nice things of being back in the Netherlands is that I can watch all the food programs the BBC offers. The last two weeks I have followed Dave Meyers and Simon King, on their search for ‘Best of British’. In Friday’s episode the Hairy Bikers explored the relationship between American and Britain’s culinary cultures.

I am so glad I didn’t resist the urge to make the chocolate brownie from this episode. It’s a fantastic, gooey brownie with dark and white chocolate chunks and crunchy nuts.

The original recipe can be found on the BBC food website. I made my brownie in a 20X20 cm square cake tin, so it took a bit longer to bake. I replaced the pecan nuts by hazelnuts and left out the cherries.

Ingredients

200g butter

175g caster sugar

175g soft light brown sugar

4 large eggs

100g plain flour

50g cocoa powder

125g plain dark chocolate chunks

125g white chocolate chunks

100g hazelnuts

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5. Lightly butter a 20x20cm square cake tin and line the base and sides with a large sheet of baking parchment.

Put the butter in a medium saucepan and place over a very low heat until only just melted. Remove the butter from the heat and stir in the sugars until well combined. Whisk the eggs in a large bowl until smooth and slowly pour the butter and sugar mixture on top, stirring constantly until well combined.

Put the flour and cocoa powder in a sieve and sift on top of the egg and butter mixture. Beat hard with a wooden spoon until smooth. Leave to cool for 10 minutes. (This will prevent the chocolate chunks melting too quickly when they are added to the batter.)

Roughly chopped the hazelnuts and stir them with the chocolate pieces into the cake batter. Pour into the prepared tin and spread to all the corners with a rubber spatula or the back of a spoon.

Bake the brownie in the centre of the oven for 40 minutes, or until the mixture is crusty on the surface and lightly cooked inside.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 5-10 minutes. Take out of the tin and transfer to a board. Cut into squares or rectangles to serve warm or leave to cool completely if serving cold.