Spicy Peruvian Avocado Brownies

Having been sent eight large ripe Peruvian Hass avocados, I didn’t have a great deal of time to use them up. Following on from the avocado chocolate chip cookies I made a few weeks ago, I wanted to continue with the avocado baking theme. Leafing through the accompanying booklet, I found a recipe for Peruvian Hass avocado brownies. With my well known love of all things brownie, I didn’t need to cogitate further.

Of course, I made a few adjustments with the recipe. For a start I thought a hint of chilli and a soupçon of cinnamon would be appropriate flavours to enhance the South American feel of the brownies.

Sadly I didn’t have any Peruvian chocolate to hand, so I made do with using up three partly used bars which were making my cupboard look untidy. As it happens, one of them was from Ecuador, so at least it was from the right neck of the woods.

As well as the spices I added a little cocoa powder for extra richness and used mostly brown sugar for fudginess. As I was using duck eggs which are quite large, I added a little bit of extra chocolate too.

Whilst the avocado by no means replaced all of the butter, it did have less saturated fat than many brownie recipes, so it could be argued that they are slightly better for you.

These are real melt in your mouth brownies. Sort of light but fudgy and unctuous at the same time. The touch of spice was just right, a catch at the back of the throat and a hint of something warming, but nothing that overpowered the deep rich chocolateyness of these brownies.

You can eat several of these and your palate is left feeling quite clean at the end of it. I should point out that eating several at a time is not really recommended. We could barely detect the taste of avocado. None of the taste testers (other than super taster CT) noticed it, even after I told them what the brownies contained. Not being able to taste avocado in your brownies, when all’s said and done, is for most of us, a good thing.

This is how I made:

Spicy Peruvian Avocado Brownies

• Melted 150g unsalted butter in a pan over low heat with 270g chocolate (I used a mixture of 70& plain,  53% dark and 37% milk). Stirred to combine, then left to cool a little.
• Beat 100g dark brown sugar, 50g golden caster sugar together with 3 duck eggs (large hens eggs will be fine) using electric beaters for about 3 minutes
• Mashed 1 large Peruvian Hass avocado and added it to the eggs. Beat the mixture for a further minute.
• Poured the chocolate mixture down the side of the bowl and folded the mixture in as gently as possible.
• Sifted in 60g self-raising flour, 1 scant tbsp cocoa powder, ¼ tsp cayenne pepper and ¼ tsp ground cinnamon.
• Folded this in until just incorporated.
• Scraped the batter into a 9″ sq. silicone mould and baked at 180℃ for 25 minutes.
• Left in the mould to cool then cut into 16 pieces.