Raspberry and White Chocolate Brownies

As promised, a review of my raspberry and white chocolate brownies:

They went down a treat! We ate them pretty much warm from the oven while watching The Social Network. I really need to invest in a slightly smaller baking tray for my brownies, as the recipe I use makes slightly less than is enough to fully fill the tin and give the brownies a good depth. I may also try doubling the ingredients as I don't think this would make too much mixture for the tin. I had wanted to use freeze-dried raspberries but Waitrose had sold out and as fresh ones are a little beyond my budget at the moment I used tinned! They didn't look too appealing but actually worked quite well. My only issue was that because they were so soft they sort of disintegrated into the mix, this meant that you got little surprise bursts of raspberry every now and then. Next time I will aim for freeze dried to make the raspberry more obvious. For the white chocolate I used Waitrose 'cooks ingredients' white chocolate chunks. I'm a big fan of their 'cooks' range, they also do fudge chunks which is used to make apple and fudge muffins. You get a tub of little chunks of chocolate or fudge that are the perfect size for baking. I was actually using the left overs from when I made some of Nigellas white chocolate and cranberry cookies (yum!!) over Christmas and I could have done with having some more, lesson learnt for next time!

Here is what they looked like:

We didn't eat all of them so I took the leftovers with me on the Eurostar on Friday morning for the girls and I to eat on the journey. Everyone seemed to enjoy them. I'll def be making these again.

Here is the recipe should anyone wish to try them out:

200g dark chocolate (try and use a high cocoa solid e.g 75%+) broken into chunks

175g unsalted butter

130g plain flour

325g caster sugar (I use golden)

3 eggs

200g white chocolate chunks

150-200g raspberries 

Pre-heat oven to 170C/325F/Gas Mark 3

1. Place a bowl on to a saucepan of water, you only need about an inch or 2 of water in the pan, turn onto a medium to low heat and melt the chocolate and the butter. Do not let the water boil.

2. When the butter and chocolate are melted remove from the heat (be careful-the bowl will be hot!) and mix in the sugar.

3. Once the sugar is mixed in add the flour and mix well, then add the eggs and mix well. 

4. When the batter is fully mixed add the chocolate and the raspberries (leave a few of both to sprinkle on the top)

5. Place the mixture into a greased and lined baking tray (apprx 33x25x5cm) and cook for 30-35 minutes. Normally the top of the brownies will have developed a 'crust' that will crack when touched. The brownies should still feel  a little bit springy when you touch then. You don't want dry brownies.

6. Remove from the oven and leave to cool before cutting into squares. Or if like me you cant wait, eat them warm, maybe with vanilla ice cream melting on top.

The basis of this recipe is from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook, an absolute favourite of mine for fail safe baking.