Lockdown baking - when you have no flour.

These indulgent chocolate brownies are made without flour and are my "go to" recipe when I am invited to a party. The kids will like making these and love eating them with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

What you will need:

180g of chocolate

230g unsalted butter

450g of white caster sugar

150g brown caster sugar

1tbsp Vanilla Extract

4 eggs

150g of finely ground hazelnuts / almonds (this ingredient can be substituted with flour if / when you have it)

120g good quality cocoa

1tsp salt

Method:

Preheat your oven to 175 deg c.

Using a chopper, crush your chocolate into small pieces. Place this into a large bowl with your butter. Place a saucepan of water on a low heat and put the bowl of chocolate and butter on top, ensuring that the bowl does not reach the bottom of the pan. Let the heat from the water melt your chocolate and butter mix, stirring until you have a smooth mix with no lumps, at which point you should remove the bowl from the pan.

Leave your chocolate and butter mix to cool to room temperature. In the mean time use a mixer with flat beater attachment to combine the eggs and sugar until they are light in colour and have thickened. When you lift the mixed head up, the mixture should fall from the beater in a trail, incorporating back into the mix. This is known as “ribbon stage” as the batter falls back into the mix in a ribbon-like way. Once you have reached this stage, add the cooled chocolate and butter mix and then the vanilla extract. Add the ground nuts, salt and cocoa and mix until smooth.

Take a 9 inch by 13 inch baking tin and line it with parchment. A good trick for this is to make sure your parchment is 2 inches larger than your tray, i.e. 11 inches by 15 inches. Make a diagonal 1 inch cut at each corner, towards the centre of the sheet. This will allow the parchment to overlap at the corners of your tin.

Spoon your brownie batter into the tin and smooth with a palette knife or spatula. At this point you can sprinkle shards of chocolate on top of the batter or swirl in some chocolate hazelnut spread. Bake in the middle of the oven for approximately 35-40 minutes and until the slab has a papery crust on top and the sides are beginning to come away from the edges of the tin. Ideally a toothpick inserted in the middle should come away clean but the brownie slab should still have a bit of softness in the middle.

Lift the slab out of the baking tin using the parchment as a sling, and leave to cool on a baking rack. Once totally cooled, cut into squares and finish with a light sprinkling of icing sugar.