Bite Sighs: Sweeten your brownies with … plums and cinnamon?

photo by: Nick Krug

Cinnamon Plum Brownies by Audrey Lintner.

Hey, there! Did you ever have one of those days when you really, really needed a serious dose of chocolate? I have ’em a lot, so I’m always on the lookout for the next great brownie recipe. Chewy, fudgy or cake style, brownies deliver a much-needed cocoa blast that can perk up a rough day with just one bite.

This recipe turns out a dense, fudgy brownie with mild sweetness and a hint of cinnamon. The extra flavor boost comes from plum jelly, an ingredient that your coffee break guests will probably never guess! Behold, the recipe.


Cinnamon Plum Brownies

Ingredients:

3/4 cup butter

3 tablespoons plum jelly

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon cocoa


Directions:

photo by: Nick Krug

Cinnamon Plum Brownies by Audrey Lintner.

As usual, slick up a 9×13 pan and heat your oven to 350 degrees.

Slice the butter into meltable chunks and zap it, along with the plum jelly, in the microwave for one minute. Give it a brisk stir to get rid of the last lumps.

In a medium-sized bowl, whip the eggs and sugar together. Confession time: One of my many idiosyncrasies is the insistence on using a wooden spoon to mix brownie batter. It probably doesn’t make a darned bit of difference, but it feels “right” to me. And now, back to our regularly scheduled recipe.

Pour the butter-jelly mixture into the eggs and sugar; add the vanilla and stir the whole mess until it’s reasonably homogenized. In a separate little bowl, stir the dry ingredients together with a fork. Mash any cocoa lumps, or you might end up with nasty little bitter powdery pockets in your finished product. Bleagh.

Dump the dry blend into the butter blend and stir with a quickness for about one minute. Your batter will look more like frosting at this point; avoid the temptation to eat it. Well, maybe just a taste. Or two. OK, that’s enough. Raw eggs, blah, blah, blah. Scrape the rest of the batter into your prepared pan and smooth it out with a rubber spatula.

Slide the pan into the oven and bake the brownies for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick poked in the center comes out mostly clean. Now would be a good time to start a pot of coffee or tea.

Once they read as “done,” pull the pan from the oven and set it on a rack to cool. These brownies are really fudgy, so they’ll need to cool for at least 15 minutes before you try cutting them. Trying to clean melty brownie out of your best apron after said brownie has dribbled over the back of your hand and down your front because you were too impatient to wait a decent interval before cutting is aggravating, to say the least.

If you have more self-control than I do, these brownies will keep nicely in a lidded pan for several days.

Enjoy!

— Have a question or suggestion for Bite Sighs? Email Audrey Lintner at bitesighs@hotmail.com.