During Baking Week we talked about tsp spices - a clever line of spices packaged in individual servings. It's a good gift for an occasional or novice baker.
tsp spices asked if we would like to see a sweet and spicy recipe using their spices and we said, sure! Here then are Sweet Heat Brownies, full of chocolate and the tingling warmth of cinnamon and chile. There is also one secret ingredient that we really didn't expect in brownies...
Sesame seeds - have you ever seen those in a brownie? We're curious to try it now...
Sweet Heat Brownies
makes one 8x12 pan
1/4 cup sesame seeds, toasted
4 ounces good quality unsweetened chocolate
4 ounces butter
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 packets tsp spices Organic True Cinnamon (ground)
5 packets tsp spices Organic Ancho Chile (ground)
1/2 cup flour
1 cup slivered almonds
1/4 teaspoon salt
To toast sesame seeds, put them on a piece of foil in toaster oven or broiler on high heat until golden, about 1 minute. Set aside.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8x12 inch baking pan and set aside. Melt the chocolate and butter together in the top of a double boiler or carefully in the microwave. Let cool a bit.
With an electric mixer, beat together eggs, sugar, vanilla, true cinnamon and ancho chile. Stir the chocolate-butter mixture into the egg mixture, then stir in the flour, most of the sesame seeds and most of the almonds (reserve a handful of seeds and nuts to sprinkle on top before baking).
Spoon the mixture into the pan and spread evenly. Bake until the center is just set. About 25 minutes, checking to be sure edges are not burning brown. Do not bake too long, or the brownies with lose their chewy texture. Let cool in pan at least 30 minutes before cutting.
Makes about 24 2x2 inch brownies.
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
I'm so curious how these taste, though my husband's aversion to chili (and heat) will probably prevent me from baking them. (I gave him a piece of the Dagoba chocolate with chili nibs a few days ago; it didn't go well.)
a question: if I don't have the tsp spice packets, does each packet contain a teaspoon worth of spice?
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I've been really intrigued by these and was hoping someone else would post a review. I forged ahead and made them this afternoon. And the verdict is... they're good! The chile and the cinnamon give them a nice flavor, but they're not hot, which I thought they might be with 5 tsps of chile. The only thing I'm on the fence about is the sesame seeds. They have a pretty strong flavor, but they do break up the intensity of the chocolate & spice mixture. Next time I make these I might try a batch with fewer or no sesame seeds.
view diek's profile