Cherry Coconut Brownies

Donna Hay was so right when she said that brown doesn't photograph well. I had a bad day with the camera with these brownies, but they tasted so damn good that I had to tell you about them anyway. The main problem I had was that I didn't have the right sized tin and I was making up the recipe in my head, so my brownies were too thick. So I had to cut narrow, tall pieces of brownie rather than fat, short rectangles. Oh well, no one seemed to mind.

I was making a big tin plus a small ramekin of the mixture because I had a tiny bit left over and I got so excited about tasting the ramekin brownie that I forgot about the big tin and managed to slightly burn the very top of them. It was very upsetting because it meant I lost that lovely crackly top that you expect to see on a good brownie. But just to prove the recipe works, I'll show you the lovely texture of the mini brownie I was testing:

See?! If only I hadn't forgotten about the big tin! Oh well, luckily I remembered to rescue them before they tasted burnt, so they were still great to eat. It was fudgy without being raw or too dense which is something I'm not a huge fan of in brownies. The tart cherries and crunchy bits of coconut were amazingly good in this super moist brownie. I always knew it would be, I mean bloody hell, these are the ingredients of a Cherry Ripe. I was obsessed with Cherry Ripe as a child when I was stuck in the Middle East and Malaysia for years without any access to them. My brother used to bring me them over from Perth and one time he brought so many that I overdosed on them and haven't been able to enjoy them with the same gusto since.

Cherry Coconut Choc Brownies
250g dark chocolate
245g butter + 5 g for greasing tin
1 cup shredded coconut
1 1/2 cups chopped cherries (fresh, frozen or canned, whatever you can get. I used canned)
150 self-raising flour
200g caster sugar
3 eggs

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Grease and line a 20x30cm baking tin. Drain cherries if they are in syrup and chop into halves.

Cut butter into cubes and roughly chop up chocolate and place both in a heatproof bowl. Melt chocolate and butter together over a double boiler and then set aside to cool.

Mmm chocolatey...

Beat eggs and sugar together with an electric mixer on low speed until they are well combined. Beat in melted chocolate and butter until smooth. Stir in cherries. Fold flour and coconut gently into the mixture until just combined, taking care to not overmix. Pour into prepared tin, smooth over with a spatula and bake for about 20-30 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out with moist crumbs and no raw batter stuck to it.

Cool completely in its tray on a wire rack then turn out onto rack and cut into squares.

These were a huge hit with everyone, I'm happy because these days I get permission from the boyfriend to bake as much as I want because he can feed it to his workmates as well as mine. It's funny how nothing seems to get people more excited than super chocolatey things. The boy being his usual tactful self mentioned that the dark fudgy brownie with the bits of white coconut looked like worms or maggots crawling through the dirt. Thanks. But then I thought, this could be a great thing to do as part of a halloween dessert! Ooh yes, going to have to brainstorm this idea...