Mexican Chocolate Brownies

My new favourite ingredient is Mexican chocolate. I've been keeping a stock of it for about a year in the vain hope that one day I will just stop talking about it and cook chicken mole poblano.

In the meantime, I started to use it in a chocolate cake recipe which is a rather dense cake but delicious all the same. Last week, with a newly fixed oven and a new tradition of welcoming a new team member with cake and coffee, I just HAD to do some baking.

Baking for work is getting harder and harder to do with more and more people being gluten intolerant (or picking up esoteric Daoist diets that eliminate the "5 evil grains"). Luckily, I had lots of chickpea flour left over from a Indian dinner party but what to bake that wouldn't taste like a gluten free (evil-grain free) cake. In the end, I decided to merge the mexican chocolate cake recipe with a brownie recipe seeing that brownies really don't have much flour in the recipe to begin with.

Mexican Chocolate Brownies
Melted butter or margarine, for greasing
125g butter, chopped
200g (1 cup, firmly packed) soft brown sugar
125g mexican chocolate, chopped
3 eggs
50g (1/3 cup) plain flour
35g (1/3 cup) almond meal
1/4 tsp baking powder

(Mexican chocolate can be substituted for plain chocolate and 1-2 teaspoons of cinnamon. Substitute flour with chickpea flour or gluten-free equivalent. Measurements remain the same in substitution)

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease an 18 x 28cm cake tin with the melted butter or margarine and line the base of the pan with non-stick baking paper.
2. Place butter, brown sugar and chocolate in a large saucepan and stir over medium heat until well combined
3. Remove from heat and beat in the eggs using a wooden spoon.
4. Sift together the flour, almond meal and baking powder into the chocolate mixture and stir until well combined.
5. Pour into the prepared tin and bake in the preheated oven for 35-40 minutes or until firm and until a few crumbs cling to a skewer when it's inserted into the centre.
6. Cool and dust with icing sugar.

I've never made brownies before but this recipe is a keeper!! These were delicious and didn't last long at all. And thank god I've found a shop in Brisbane that sells Mexican chocolate so I no longer need my friend in Chicago to trek through the snow to get me some!