Brookies

This one is a bit selfish. I am surrounded swathes of coffee flavoured dessert haters in my life and so, I rarely get to indulge myself in a fat slice of my favourite coffee and walnut cake. I’m known for my addiction to coffee and the last time Hungry Hubby was out of town visiting an old friend, I decided enough was enough and these espresso brookies were born.  

Yes, that’s right – a coffee flavoured, cookie-brownie hybrid (not the collective noun for the families which lived in the fictional Brookside Close, on a rather terrible Scouse soap opera, back in the 80’s…).

If you’re a tea drinker or a milky coffee lover, look away now – this recipe isn’t for you. I make no apologies for the intense espresso hit in these brookies. It’s most definitely the dominant flavoured but it is closely followed by the richness of plenty of melted dark chocolate and rounded out with an extra spoonful of vanilla extract. I thought long and hard about writing an alternative to the freshly brewed espresso but decided for once, I’d not encourage fiddling.

Well I say I wont offer a fiddle but actually there is one thing you flat white and latte lovers out there as opposed to the hard core rocket fuel espresso aficionados like me – I used coffee flavoured chocolate chips but subbing these for milky nuggets of white chocolate may increase the appeal of my brookies to the masses.

For me, the thing which sets a brookie apart from a common or garden cookie is the texture – you get plenty of fudge in it’s centre with a puffy exterior that sags and crinkles on cooling. The added bonus is you can pick it up and eat with your fingers as opposed to a rich and gooey brownie which often requires eating from a bowl with a spoon. Not to say that is a bad thing of course but sometimes, you need a little pick me up on the run. And these brookies most certainly satisfy that urge.

The beautiful marble and mango wood serving board my brookies are sitting on is a brand new product form KitchenCraft and if you aren’t serving a batch of freshly baked goods, know that it is perfect to keep you cheese and crackers cool.

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Brookies

Servings: 20 cookies

: 122 kcal

Ingredients

• 120 g dark chocolate, chopped
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1 large egg
• 125 g dark brown sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp freshly brewed espresso
• 80 g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 100 g chocolate chips (dark/white/espresso as liked)
• 50 g soft butter

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180˚C.

2. Melt the dark chocolate, butter and espresso together over low heat in a saucepan then take off the heat. 

3. Stir in the vanilla and beat in the egg and dark brown sugar.

4. Mix in the flour and baking powder then fold in your chocolate chips.
   

5. Take rounded tablespoonfuls of batter and drop onto a lined cookie sheet - you may need to use two trays as they need a couple of inches space to allow for some spreading on baking.
   

6. Bake for approximately 8 minutes by which time they will have puffed and spread a little. They will have a dry surface but a hint of wibble in the middle showing their centres are going to be nice and fudgy when cool.
   

7. Cool on the tray for 10-15 minutes before transferring to a rack to finish cooling.
   

Recipe Notes

1. These keep very well and even get better for keeping for a day or two in an airtight tin.

Blogging Matters

As a new addition to Every Nook & Cranny, from time to time you will see an extra little something after the recipe under the heading of Blogging Matters. It might be a helpful hints I’ve discovered which will help fellow bloggers or some new feature to tell all my readers about.

Today I just want to tell you about my new subscription service – it is provided by a new company called PostMatic and I cannot recommend them highly enough. For readers, they make the conversation between the blogger and their reader so much easier as all you have to do is subscribe to the blog and when you get your email update, reply to the email.

No more proving you aren’t a robot spammer with repeated failed attempts to login that drive even me as a blogger potty on other people’s blogs! You can reply to my posts, follow me on Facebook, search my blog and rummage through my my post popular posts right in your email! I mean, come on – tell me that isn’t fantastically easy? The one thing everyone blogger wants is for their readers to engage them in conversation about their posts.

So make sure you subscribe to the blog to make sure my latest recipe is pinged straight to your inbox as soon as I hit the publish button and lets get talking. If you put the coffee on, I’ll bring the brookies x

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