Traybaking

I've finally decided to try my hand at traybaking, especially since Lundulph keeps asking for "afters" on a regular basis and I'm just too lazy to do something new every day.

I trawled through the recipe folders on my computer and found two - both from this year's Great British Bake-Off, one from Mary Berry and one from Beca, one of the contestants. Mary's was with ginger and Beca's was with chocolate and cherries, so I decided to try Beca's first, since I have a preference for these over ginger.

Reading through the recipe, the first thing that struck me was the amounts of the ingredients. Corr blimey! Also, as I was mixing things together, I was worried that there was no rising agent and was briefly tempted to add a couple of teaspoons of baking powder, but decided to stick to the recipe and see what would come out.

But I also googled the recipe to see if anyone else had made it and what they'd experienced - seems getting it baked through correctly was an issue and I decided to play it safe. In hindsight, I definitely over-baked the brownies.

Ingredients
Makes 24
300 g unsalted butter
300 g dark chocolate, 70% cocoa solids
200 g plain flour
1 tsp salt
225 g glacé cherries
150 g white chocolate
200 g plain flour
5 large eggs
150 g roasted chopped hazelnuts
24 glacé cherries for decorating
whipped cream for serving

Method

1. Dice the chocolate and butter and place in a small saucepan and let them melt on low heat. Remove as soon as everything has melted and set aside.
2. Line a 30 x 25 tin with baking paper, both bottom and sides. Pre-heat the oven to 180 °C.
3. Sift together the flour and salt in a bowl.
4. Chop the glacé cherries and the white chocolate.
5. In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar and the eggs until they go pale and foamy.
7. Pour in the chocolate-butter mixture, while continuing to whisk.
8. Slowly add the flour and make sure it's incorporated well.
9. Finally add the chopped cherries, chocolate and hazelnuts and stir in to get them well distributed throughout the batter.
   
10. Pour the mixture into the lined tin, push it into the corners and level as much as possible.
11. Carefully mark up the brownie pieces and place a glacé cherry in the middle of each rectangle, then place in the oven and bake for about 40 minutes.
    
    Test with a toothpick for readiness. The brownie should remain sticky in the middle.
12. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the baking tin for about 10 minutes, then carefully remove to a wire rack covered with a kitchen towel and allow to cool completely before cutting into rectangles.
    
13. Serve with whipped cream.

The brownies are very sweet, so I think plain whipped cream would work nicely to reduce the sweetness. This is how sticky cake is usually served in Sweden. Unfortunately I baked them for an hour and so they went dry and crumbly - Lundulph managed to spread a good part of his first piece over the table. Still, they were quite tasty.

For the baking, I used my adjustable tin and set it to 12 x 10 inches (as it is divided in such a way). The original recipe stated 12 x 9 inches. However, this was also way too thick I think. Would be worth doing in a 12 x 11 or even 12 x 12 sized tin.

Preparations took quite a bit longer than I expected, mainly the chopping of the cherries, I guess a food processor would help here. This is why I skipped melting some white chocolate and swirling over each brownie piece before placing a cherry on top. Perhaps this is the reason why the cherries sank in quite a bit. But I was knackered.