Cherry brownie – my new summer hit

To be completely honest, this was supposed to be a sour cherry brownie. But since I can’t find sour cherries here in Denmark (most of the people here haven’t even heard of such thing), I just settled for throwing some local cherries in my brownie, while they were in season. Served it with a blob of good vanilla ice cream on top and everybody seemed to be super happy.

However, if you find yourself in an Eastern European country, try to replace the cherries in this recipe with some sour cherries. Especially if you’re like me and love a nicely balanced desert that’s sweet, but not too sweet, and paired with something a tiny bit sour. That’s always a hit for my taste buds 🙂

If you’re thinking about giving it a try with this combo, you must be prepared. This brownie is not very sweet. Just like most of my deserts. It has probably about half of the amount of sugar in a normal brownie. But that’s just how I like my deserts. I like to feel all the different tastes, rather than just eating something that’s incredibly sweet. My mom used to always bake nicely balanced deserts, never exaggerating with the sweetness. So that’s probably where this comes from. Any complains about sweetness (or the lack of it), send them to my mamma.

The easy recipe

For this one you only need a few ingredients, and you probably already have most of them at home. Try to use a good quality dark chocolate and fresh cherries. When you pick the cherries look at their stems – they should be green. Once you have all the ingredients ready weighed, it should not take more than one hour until your cherry brownie is out of the oven. Are you ready?

Ingredients:

• 200g dark chocolate (64-70%)
• 200g butter cut into chunks
• 100g all-purpose flour
• 30g pure cocoa powder
• 6 large eggs
• a tiny pinch of salt
• 200g sugar
• vanilla extract or some good rum
• 200g cherries (pitted and halved)

Tools:

• heat resistant bowl and a pot
• hand or stand mixer with whisk attachment
• silicone spatula or spoon
• sifter
• baking tray – this recipe makes a 22x33cm tray
• optional – cherry pitter

Instructions:

1. Rinse well the cherries. Pit and halve them. You can use a pitter if you have one, otherwise it works fine with a small knife. Just cut in half around the stone, open and remove the stone from the one half. Set aside.
2. Weigh all the ingredients. Place the flour and cocoa powder in the same bowl and whisk together with a fork. Set aside.
3. In a heat resistant bowl place the finely chopped chocolate and the chunks of butter. Slowly melt them over a baine marie, stirring from time to time in order to get a smooth mixture. Once everything is melted put the bowl away from the pot with water. Set aside and let it cool down a bit.
4. Preheat the oven to 180C. While the chocolate mixture is resting, start working on the rest of the batter mixture. Add the eggs, a tiny pinch of salt and the sugar to a large mixing bowl. Start mixing on low to medium speed, increasing to medium to high after the sugar has incorporated. Beat until the eggs triple in size and they become a pale yellow and the mixture is full of air bubbles.
5. By the time the eggs reached the desired consistency, the chocolate-butter mixture has cooled down a bit. Now you can start pouring it into the eggs mixture and continue beating on medium speed until everything is incorporated. Make sure you don’t pour everything at once, but pour it in a constant flow. Then mix in your favourite flavour (I like a splash of good rum in my brownie). And you are done with the mixer.
6. Sift the flour-cocoa mix onto the eggs-chocolate mixture. With a silicone spatula or spoon easily incorporate the dry ingredients, with soft bottom to top movements. This way you are trying to not lose all the air you created by beating the eggs-sugar-chocolate mixture. Once all the flour is incorporated and you don’t have any flour pockets hiding on the bottom of your bowl, the batter is ready.
7. Pour the brownie batter in a baking tray lined with baking paper. Distribute it evenly towards the corners of the tray with a spatula. Spread the cherry halves all over the brownie batter. Then gently press them to the bottom of the mixture.
8. Bake at 180C (no fan) for about 40 minutes, until you get a nice crackly top. You can try it with a toothpick and if you like it fudgy, you have to take it out when there’s still some sticky crumbs on the toothpick. Let it cool down on a rack until it gets to room temperature. Cut into chocolicious squares and serve your cherry brownie just as it is or with a blob of vanilla ice cream on top.

Happy baking, everyone!