Live, Love, & Eat in Sayulita: Fudgy Nutella Brownies

Chocolate and hazelnut is such a delicious combination. How do Fudgy Nutella Brownies sound? Only three main ingredients! At first, I could not even imagine these coming out good. A challenge? Oh yes, I love a culinary challenge! I decided to give them a try and am I ever happy that I did! Fudgy, chocolatey, with a great hazelnut flavor, and oh, so easy to make! I think that you should make these brownies in your Sayulita kitchen today! So here is the simple recipe: 

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 large eggs

• 1&1/4 cups Chocolate Hazelnut spread, such as Nutella

• ½ cup flour

• ¼ teaspoon salt

• Coarsely chopped, toasted, skinned hazelnuts

*I always buy the hazelnuts at our Friday Sayulita Mercado del Pueblo from the vendors right at the entrance to the market. Having a batch of toasted hazelnuts prepared and ready to use in cookies, salads, and brownies is so great. The skin gives off a bitter taste, so you will always want to do the following process before using them. *Toast raw hazelnuts in a 350 degree oven until skins blister. Create a pouch from a clean dry tea towel and enclose the hot hazelnuts. Rub the nuts against each other through the towel for about 30 seconds. Remove the hazelnuts that have very little skin remaining, close towel, and repeat a few times until all the nuts are skinned. You will never get every bit of skin off, and that is perfectly fine.

METHOD:

•Preheat oven to 350 degrees

•Line the bottom of an 8x8 baking pan with parchment paper, leaving a large overhang on both ends. This acts as a sleeve to make the removal from the pan a simple task!

•Beat eggs on low speed using a hand held or standing mixer. You could also use a whisk if you do not have an electric mixer.

•Add the nutella, and beat or whisk until well combined.

•Add the flour and the ¼ teaspoon of salt and blend well.

•I like to add the roughly chopped toasted skinned hazelnut to add to the hazelnut flavor

•Bake at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes. The original recipe called for 25 minutes; I baked them for 25 minutes, and they were too dry! So, test at 18 minutes. As soon as you see that the center is slightly puffed, take them out of the oven, and let them cool on rack for 20 minutes. Then simply carefully lift up overhanging parchment paper to remove brownies from the pan.

•Slice as big or small as you would like. I love them served with a nice scoop of vanilla ice cream or very lightly sweetened whipped cream (crema para batir). This crema is always available at Alas Blancas. Take some to your next Sayulita pot luck. Everyone will love them. I am totally sure that you will make these over and over because they are so simple to make, have few ingredients, and taste FANTASTIC!

Lately I have been making homemade mayonnaise, and it is so very easy, healthy, and delicious. I will tell you how to make it in my next column.

Hint; if you do not have an immersion blender, sometimes called a stick blender, treat yourself to one. Walmart is where you can often find a very inexpensive one. A must in my kitchen!