Gluten Free Yuzu Brownies

This week at work we were lucky enough to receive a parcel of goodies from The Wasabi Company’s new Japanese range that included yuzu puree and candied yuzu. Yuzu is a Japanese fruit believed to be a hybrid of sour mandarin and Ichang papeda. It has a very unique citrus flavour so when I saw yuzu products I immediately thought to make brownies! I took them into work today and the went down a storm, even being touted as the best brownie ever (extremely high praise from an office full of foodies like ours).

Yuzu is a very niche product here so if you don’t have it you can replace the yuzu ingredients in this recipe with marmalade. You won’t get the very special and unique taste but you will end up with a very tasty chocolate orange brownie.

Gluten Free Yuzu Brownies

Prep time: 35 minutes

Cooking time: 25 minutes

Serves: 12

Ingredients:

185g salted butter

195g dark chocolate

85g gluten free plain flour (I used doves farm)

40g cocoa powder

3 large eggs – beaten

275g caster sugar

50g yuzu puree

50g candied yuzu

(If you don’t have the two yuzu products you can add 100g marmalade instead)

Heat your oven to 180C. Butter the inside of a 20cm square cake tins and line with non-stick baking paper.

Break the chocolate into small pieces and put it in a heat proof bowl along with the butter. Fill a small saucepan to about a quarter with boiling water, then put the bowl on top so it’s not touching the water. Put over a low heat and stir occasionally until the butter and chocolate have melted. Remove the bowl and set aside to cool.

Sieve the flour and cocoa powder together into a bowl to get rid of any lumps.

Tip the eggs and caster sugar into a mixer and mix at top speed until the mixture goes lighter, smooth and creamy and has doubled in size.

Mix the yuzu into the chocolate mixture then pour the chocolate into the eggs and sugar. Gently fold the two together with a rubber spatula. It’s very important to keep the air in the mixture as this will give you delicious fluffy brownies. To do this slice straight down through the middle of the mix with the spatula scoop and fold the mix over, give the bowl a quarter turn and do it again. Continue until the two mixtures are one and the colour is a mottled dark brown.

Sieve the dry ingredients into the bowl then very gently fold them through. The mixture will end up looking gungy and fudgy. Stop just before you feel you should, you don’t want to over mix and knock all the air out.

Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin, scraping the mixture out of the bowl with the spatula. Gently spread the mixture into the corners of the tin and level it off.

Place on the middle shelf of your preheated oven and set your timer for 25 minutes.

When the buzzer goes, the top of the brownies should have a shiny, papery crust and the sides are just beginning to come away from the tin. If they look underdone pop them back in for another 5 minutes.

When the time is up remove from the oven and set aside to cool. Allow the brownies to cool completely in the tin before removing, cutting into squares and enjoying with a nice cup of tea.