Good Friday dawned last week and the walk to work was eerily quiet. Unsurprising given that it is a public holiday so most people were lazing in at home, hot cross buns and breakfast in bed, or whatever you do when nothing's open and you don't have to go to work. Our office doesn't observe any holidays apart from Christmas Day, which means we get about 10 extra days off each year instead - quite handy to take whenever, but sucks at the time with everyone's Facebook going all "checked in at Gatwick, woohoo off to the sun". I can't say that Friday was my most productive day of the year, given the distraction in the form of hot cross buns, chocolate and some rather amazing crème egg brownies that one of the girls had brought in.
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| Managed to hide brownie for about half an hour in my stationary drawer.. |
I had planned on bringing some in also, but..ended up at the pub for 'half an hour' (multiply by about 7), on Thursday night so it didn't happen. We'd seen these all over the internet last year while in Morzine, and had been keen to make them, but couldn't get our hands on crème eggs out in France at the time. Petra was coming for brunch on Sunday so I made a coeliac-friendly version that were a total success. Very easy and obviously outrageously decadent. I haven't tried the recipe minus the crème eggs but should give it a go for plain brownies as it has a lot less sugar and 1-2 less eggs than my go-to Pandoro recipe, with great results.
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Recipe (from the internet, adapted from 'Isaac Gluten' blog)
185g butter
185g dark chocolate (2 x 100g blocks - eat a square and chop the rest)
3 eggs
275g sugar (about 1 1/4 cups)
85g ground almonds (I take a tablespoon out to top yogurt or something, then use the rest of a 100g packet)
40g cocoa powder (about 6 tablespoons)
6 crème eggs, cut in half length wise
1. Melt the butter and chocolate together, in a bowl over simmering water, or the microwave, or saucepan.
2. Beat the eggs and sugar together til thick and creamy. I used my new amazing food processor, basically because we don't have any large bowls at the moment. Blitzing resulted in a super thick, pale mix which created a lot of volume.
3. Pour the butter/chocolate in and mix (spoon rather than motor running).
4. Stir in the almonds and cocoa powder until everything is mixed and smooth.
5. Pour into a lined tin.
6. Place the crème egg halves, sunny side up, evenly atop the batter.
7. Bake at 170/gas 4, for about 40 minutes, or until firm to the touch but definitely erring on the side of under-done. Warning, be careful with time and temperature when using almonds rather than regular flour.
8. Cut into squares when cool.
Very yummy, lazy Easter spent watching episodes of HBO series Girls and drinking tea like a rebel.
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