Chocolate and Cinnamon Scented Coffee Brownies
Hello everyone! How are things? Here in Castello 4811, we are getting ready for the weekend. Of course, we are staying in... but the intention is to delight our palates with delicious food, sweet and savoury, and watch old movies. A bit of good news is that it seems that from the 4th of May, Italy shall be entering "phase 2", and that in the last days... well, the situation seems to be improving quite a lot. Of course, we will still be required to take preventive measures, but gradually activities will re-open.
To joke, I said to Vito that we could end up like the protagonists of the movie Mediterraneo by Gabriele Salvatores (if you haven't seen it, you must watch it, it is incredible). Yes, because we've stopped listening to the radio in the morning, (I mean... it's like 5 hours of ongoing news, and the subject is always one and always the same, and... yes, we got it, no need to torture ourselves like that), so we might still be locked at home, him reading, me cooking and taking pictures, while the world outside has already returned to normality without us realising it 🤣🤣🤣. Of course, I'm just joking. We read the papers everyday, but we are also trying to keep our minds busy in more productive ways.
Anyway, going back to us, the recipe I'm sharing for the weekend is: chocolate and cinnamon scented coffee brownies. Simple to make, with ingredients that are easy to find and that, most importantly, provide our body with endorphins!
A couple of weeks ago I started adding a teaspoon of spices to our coffee, and Vito loves it. His favourite so far is with cinnamon. Apparently, adding cinnamon to coffee is full of beneficial effects. I've read that it helps reducing the levels of sugar in our blood (in fact, it is recommended to those suffering from diabetes), blood circulation, and also to prevent possible infections. It seems that the combination of coffee and cinnamon accelerates the metabolism too. But mostly, it tastes delicious and releases a lovely perfume in the kitchen!
I just add a teaspoon of ground cinnamon to the moca, otherwise the spicy taste would be overwhelming, whereas if I want to use it in a recipe I might add more. I used it for our brownies and, let me tell you, bites of pure pleasure. The flavour is not over-powering, with a delicate aftertaste. We loved them, and hope you will too.
Have a great weekend and talk soon!
RECIPE: CHOCOLATE AND CINNAMON SCENTED COFFEE BROWNIES
Ingredients:
100 gr dark chocolate
80 gr butter
1 espresso cup coffee
2 eggs
150 gr brown sugar
60 gr 00 flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
a pinch of salt
Method:
1. Prepare a moca of coffee adding 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon to the coffee powder.
2. Melt chocolate and butter in a water bath, add the coffee and amalgamate well until you get a nice and smooth cream. Let cool a little.
3. Pre-heat oven at 180°
4. In a bowl, whisk eggs, sugar and a pinch of salt. When you get a foamy mixture, add the previously sifted flour, baking powder and the remaining ground cinnamon one spoon at a time, and amalgamate well to eliminate possible lumps. Finally add the liquids and stir.
5. Grease a piece of parchment paper and bake for about 18/20 minutes.
Bye bye ;-)