Hi, I am Lulu and I am a brownie addict. If you did not know this – go ahead and check out my recipe index. You will see that I currently have three recipes for brownies. And now I am adding a fourth! Now, you may be wondering – what sparked this sudden desire for chocolate hazelnut brownies? Good question! Much like every other craving and recipe on this blog, I decided I no longer wanted to spend money at Caravan cafe buying these chocolate hazelnut brownies. Instead of spending £3.50 every week (and that doesn’t include the cost of the latte), I would learn to make them.
Lucky for me – Caravan Coffee Roasters have a cookbook that has the recipe for their world-famous chocolate hazelnut brownies. How lucky am I? Naturally, this meant I had to re-create them right? Now I should mention a few things before we get started. These chocolate hazelnut brownies are dense, rich, flavourful, indulgent and heavenly. What are they not? They are not:
- quick and easy. They take about and 1 and a half hours to make and bake. But you’ll need to cool these in the fridge overnight.
- cheap. you need about 300g (2 and a little bit cups) of good quality chocolate. I used expensive chocolate bars because that is all I had on hand lol. And you also need hazelnuts (do not skip this part!).
- easy on the butter. There is about 1 cup of butter in the brownies and then the pan is also buttered.
- binging brownies. These brownies are rich and indulgent so eating just one is perfect!
But before jumping to the recipe, read the section below for my tips on how to get these brownies to taste AMAZE-ing!
LET’S TALK ABOUT BROWNIES BABY, LET’S TALK ABOUT YOU AND ME
Read the above title in the same tone as Salt n Peppa’s song. I was about to turn that title into a mini freestyle but I practiced some self-restraint. Anyways, back to the chocolate hazelnut brownies. Now the texture of these brownies are dense and fudgy. At Caravan they have a very solid feel – even slightly crumbly if that makes sense. The dense, crumbliness of a shortbread cookie but also fudgy at the same time.
The chocolate fudge flavour comes from the combination of butter and chocolate set over a water bath. The recipe’s ingredients are given in grams and I provide the metric equivalent. The dense fudge structure will come from this part as well, which is why it is SUPER important not to add too much butter. If you add too much butter (like I did the first time around), you will get a really melty-chocolate feel to the brownie and not that dense texture we are looking for. Still tasty though!
The chocolate hazelnut brownie batter calls for espresso and (toasted) hazelnuts. I did not have espresso I used the equivalent of instant coffee. You can also use 3 tsp of espresso extract in 4 tbsp of water as an alternative.
Finally, the most important part – baking the brownie. As you can see there are only 6 ingredients in this brownie recipe. The brownies are also cooked at a really low temperature (150C/300F). The instructions said to remove the brownies once the mixture on the inserted skewer was “warm to the touch.” Okay, real talk – what kind of ambiguous instruction is that? The batter won’t be “warm” when it comes out of a hot oven. What I found is that you have to cook these brownies for 35-45 minutes. Do not go longer than that. The brownie batter will still be liquidy. But the edges should be set and cracked and the center slightly jiggly. Oh and lastly, you must refrigerate your brownies overnight prior to consuming. This is the last step to ensuring a good texture to the brownies.
CHOCOLATE HAZELNUT BROWNIES
dense. rich. fudge. toasted hazelnuts.
Chocolate Hazelnut Brownies
These brownies are so rich and indulgent you won't want to try anything else!
Ingredients
- 240 g unsalted butter, cubed (1 cup)
- 275 g dark chocolate, chopped (2 cups)
- 4 eggs, room temperature
- 300 g caster sugar (1 1/2 cups)
- 100 g plain flour (2/3 cups)
- 100 ml espresso, cooled *
- 125 g hazelnuts, toasted and roughly chopped (1/2 cup chopped)**
Instructions
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You will need an 8x8 square baking tin, at least 3cm high (a 9x9 also works). Butter the pan and layer with parchment paper and then lightly butter the bottom of the parchment paper as well.
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Preheat the oven to 150°C/300F and have your prepared baking tin ready.
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Place the butter and chocolate in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of barely simmering water. Make sure the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the water or you'll burn the chocolate. Using a spatula, mix together until melted, then set aside to cool to room temperature.
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Whisk together the eggs and sugar on medium speed until the mixture has doubled in volume and is a pale colour. About 2-5 minutes. You can also whisk this by hand for 5-7 minutes. Let the mixture rest for 5 minutes and then bang the bowl a couple of times on the work surface to knock out some air.
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Add the flour to the mixing bowl and fold until mixed. Add the chocolate mixture and espresso to the bowl and fold until completely combined. Finally, fold the hazelnuts and pour into the prepared tin.
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Before placing in the oven, drop the baking tin a couple of times onto your work surface to knock out some air. Bake for 35–55 minutes until an inserted skewer comes out with mixture on it, but the mixture is warm to the touch. Remove from the oven and leave in the tray to cool. See notes for further clarification.
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You can eat this the same day but for a super-fudgy brownie, leave the cooled brownie tray in the fridge overnight and cut into squares the following morning.
Recipe Notes
* you can also use the equivalant in instant coffee or 3 tsp of coffee extract in 4 tbsp of water
** to toast the hazelnuts place them on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper into a pre-heated oven (180C/375F). Bake for 7-10 minutes until browned. Remove and place in a tea towel. Rub the tea towel so the hazelnuts rub against each other to remove the skin. Let cool then chop. Obviously if you are using blanched hazelnuts you do not need to do the tea towel part.
Baking times vary depending on how hot your oven is/how the heat is distributed. Because we are baking at a lower temperature, there is no big risk of overbaking the brownies and losing the gooey texture. I ended up baking my brownies for around 45-55 minutes. I knew it was ready based on how set the top/crust was (even though the skewer came out with batter). I let the brownies cool in the pan completely then chilled them in the frridge. After a few hours they were still quite goeey but they did not fall apart. However when I tried them the next day they set perfectly. If you do not bake your brownies for long enough you will have very gooey batter (like a molten chocolate cake) which is not bad - but then you won't really be eating brownies 🙂
Recipe courtesty of Happy Foodie https://thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/chocolate-espresso-and-hazelnut-brownie. Recipe feautred in Caravan: Dining All Day, w
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LISTEN THERE ISN’T MUCH TO SAY HERE. I THINK THE PICTURES SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES!
So I’m very good at following recipes to the letter with a few exceptions, one of them being when I’ve run out of certain ingredients and / or have very few of the required ingredients, thus requiring me to substitute or be innovative in the area of substitution if there’s none!
I found out when I started making the brownies that I did not have enough chocolate or castor sugar.
What I then did was use some leftover dark (70%) eating chocolate with almonds that I had bought a couple of days earlier as a snack to complement my existing supply and I used golden cane sugar as a substitute for the castor sugar but ended up only using 1 1/2 cups of it rather than the required 2 cups.
End result…..the brownies turned out perfectly just like your recipe and was the perfect amount of sweetness and chocolateyness (if there’s such a word!).
Thank you for sharing this wonderful recipe! Perfect as a dessert on a cold winter afternoon!
Hi Sabo – thank you for the lovely comment. Isn’t it awesome when your backup eating chocolate comes in handy for baking emergencies? That is why you should always buy yourself another bar at the grocery store – just in case. I too, used my regular eating chocolate in the brownies as I ran out of baking chocolate. In all honesty, as long as you are using good quality chocolate, there is no difference between the two. I used cane sugar as well! But I think I will take a page out of your book and reduce the amount by 1/2 a cup as well. SO glad you enjoyed the brownies! xo