One of my favourite things is finding new music, this morning by chance while I was listening to my much loved and thrashed playlist of Ludovico Einaudi – Seven Days Walking, I found a Calm your soul Indie/Folk playlist. Completely different from what I have been listening to for a number of weeks, but already I am loving this and I think this will be my choice of music for the next wee while. It also has an Autumnal feel about it.
As like many people Autumn is one of my favourite seasons, maybe because my birthday is in Autumn or maybe just because I have always loved Autumn colours, maybe it’s just that we finally get relief from the long hot Hawkes Bay Summers.
This Autumn I have been able to create some different ways to celebrate. In Spring we planted colourful popping corn to eat, sweet orange pumpkins for décor and carving and sunflowers because they are just happy flowers that we should all have growing in our gardens. Because we are closer to the farm we have picked up a lot more pinecones for our children and my niece and nephew to sell. The start of Autumn has been a hive of activity and it really does feel like harvest.
When we bought our house we had a very long row of Autumn raspberries, I can tell you that Autumn raspberries are seriously worth growing, I have been able to pick a bowl of berries every couple of days now for over a month and they are still going strong. There is something about having raspberries in late summer and autumn, they taste better and maybe that’s because we tend to get more sunshine hours, or maybe it’s because at Christmas we are completely over whelmed with all the berries, fruit and good food that we don’t really get to taste Raspberries on their own.
With all these raspberries I have collected I needed to start baking with them, I already have bags full in the freezer for baking or smoothies in the winter, so this week I decided to make a Chocolate Raspberry Brownie which is super delicious.
Chocolate Raspberry Brownie
Ingredients
- 275g dark chocolate (50% Cocoa is what I usually use)
- 155 g butter
- 1 1/2 cups castor sugar
- 3 eggs lightly beaten
- 1 1/2 cups of plain flour (sifted)
- 150g of Raspberries, fresh or frozen
- 150g of coarsely chopped white chocolate or caramilk is good too.
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees. Pop baking paper in a baking tin roughly 20x30cm you can use a smaller tin, it will just make your brownie thicker and need slightly longer cooking.
Pop a glass bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, place chocolate and butter in the bowl and stir until smooth, stir in the sugar.
Remove from the heat and stir in eggs, then flour, chocolate and raspberries. You want to add the raspberries last and stir gently so they don’t break up to much.
Pour mix into your baking tin, and bake for roughly 25 minutes. You want your brownie to be crunchy on the outsides on just cooked on the inside. But then again everyone likes their brownie cooked different. I don’t like mine to too dry.
Cut into small square for afternoon tea or can be served with ice-cream for desert.
Brownie can be stored in an airtight container for 7 days, if it lasts that long!
Enjoy your week
Rebeckah
From Beneath the Kowhai Tree 