Hairy Bikers cherry pecan brownies are gooey squares packed with dark and white chocolate chunks, pecans and dried sour cherries. And on BBC Food, their Best of British recipe makes 16 squares in about 70 minutes, at 375 calories each by my sums.
These keep for days, though Si and Dave doubt “it will last that long”, and with two chocolates and cherries, I believe them. And with only cocoa in the batter and no melted chocolate, the dark and white chocolate go in as 1.5cm chunks.
Taking them out in time matters most, since overbaking turns the middle spongy rather than gooey. So start checking at 25 minutes, and take them out once the top is crusty but the inside is only lightly cooked.
Hairy Bikers Cherry Pecan Brownies Recipe
Description
Melted butter and both sugars are stirred into whisked eggs, then cocoa and flour are beaten in until smooth. And after a short rest, chunky chocolate, halved pecans and sour cherries are stirred through before baking.
Ingredients
For the brownies
Instructions
- Heat and line: Heat the oven to 190°C/Fan 170°C/Gas 5. Then lightly butter a 20 x 30cm brownie or tray bake tin and line the base and sides with a large sheet of baking parchment.
- Melt the butter: Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over a very low heat until only just melted. Then take it off the heat and stir in both sugars until well combined.
- Whisk in the eggs: Whisk the eggs in a large bowl until smooth. Then slowly pour in the butter and sugar mixture, stirring constantly until well combined.
- Add the cocoa and flour: Sift the flour and cocoa over the egg mixture and beat hard with a wooden spoon until smooth. Then leave the batter to cool for 10 minutes.
- Chop and stir in: Once the batter has cooled, cut all the chocolate into chunks of about 1.5cm and break the pecans in half. Then stir the chocolate, cherries and nuts into the batter and spread it into the corners of the tin.
- Bake: Bake in the centre of the oven for 25 to 30 minutes, until crusty on top and lightly cooked inside. But take care not to overcook it, or the middle turns spongy rather than gooey.
- Cool and cut: Leave to cool in the tin for 5 to 10 minutes, then lift it out onto a board. Cut into 16 to 20 squares or rectangles to serve warm, or leave them to cool completely.
FAQs
Why does the batter cool before the chocolate goes in?
The 10-minute rest stops the chocolate chunks melting too quickly once they hit the warm batter. So the chunks stay as pockets of dark and white chocolate, which I think is the point of cutting them so big.
Can I swap the pecans or the cherries?
Walnuts are the swap given for the pecans, and they get broken in half the same way. But I’d keep the dried sour cherries, since their tang is what cuts through two kinds of chocolate.
If you only have glacé cherries, though, their all-in-one brownies in One Pot Wonders rinse and dry them first, then pair them with hazelnuts. And dried sour cherries turn up again in their black forest gateau from Big Book of Baking, alongside morello cherry jam and Kirsch.
How are these different from their Biker brownies?
Their Biker brownies with hazelnuts cream the butter and sugar, then beat in 250g of melted dark chocolate. But here the butter is melted first and stirred into whisked eggs, with no creaming at all.
The oven is hotter too, at 190°C against 170°C for the Biker brownies, both conventional settings. So I’d call these the gooier, chunkier of the two, while Si and Dave call the Biker brownies fudgy. But for their sweet potato brownies, the butter is creamed like the Biker ones and the oven goes hotter still, at 200°C.
Should I serve them warm, and how long do they keep?
Either works, because they’re meant to be cut warm after 5 to 10 minutes or left to cool completely. And I like them warm, while the white chocolate is still soft.
Wrapped well in foil, they keep for 3 to 4 days, and I keep the parcel somewhere cool rather than in the fridge.
Where do these brownies come from?
They’re from series 2 of Best of British, in the Atlantic episode first shown in April 2013, alongside a Waldorf salad with grilled mackerel.
And for another Best of British bake with pecans and white chocolate, their pecan toffee cheesecake has shards of boiled toffee through the filling.
