White Chocolate & Cherry Brownies

Everyone loves a good brownie don't they? I decided to make these a few weeks ago as we hadn't any for a long time and I was in the mood for some chocolate indulgence. These brownies are based on Nigella Lawson's recipe from her Domestic Goddess book. I've made these several times in the past, I seem to remember baking some for my boyfriends birthday the first time we celebrated it together. I've reduced the quantities as it is quite an expensive recipe due to all the chocolate and butter required and also makes a lot of brownies. I think her recipe yields around 40 brownies and as I was just baking for the 2 of us I didn't want that many, they would have been eaten eventually but I don't think my jeans would have fitted afterwards. I also removed the nuts as I didn't fancy them this time and instead added some chopped chunks of white chocolate and a few chopped glacé cherries. We ate these for pudding served with a generous drizzle of double cream, so healthy in this house sometimes!

Ingredients - makes16

I've updated this to make the cherries optional so that I can enter this recipe into Made With Love Mondays where the aim is to create recipes from scratch without any processed ingredients. Glacé cherries don't fit in with the guidelines due to the high fructose syrup used in their production but I want to share this recipe with a wider audience, hence the optional cherries.

200g unsalted butter
200g dark chocolate
250g caster sugar
3 eggs
115g plain flour
50g chopped glacé cherries - optional
100g white chocolate chopped into chunks

Preheat the oven to 190C and grease and line a 22cm square brownie tin. Melt the butter and dark chocolate together in a large saucepan over a low heat. In a bowl whisk together the eggs and sugar. Let the chocolate cool slightly before beating in the egg mixture. Fold in the flour with the cherries and white chocolate and pour into the prepared tin. Bake for 20-25 minutes until the surface is set and just starting to crack and the centre is still gooey. Leave to cool in the tin before dividing into portions.

I'm entering these into Tea Time Treats hosted by Karen and Kate where the theme this month is chocolate and into Made With Love Mondays