Chocolate Brownies with Walnuts

A warm hello to all. This little space of mine had been silent for a long time now. I missed blogging terribly but I must admit taking a break really helped. A lot of new changes have taken place in the past 10 months and each thing needed it's own personal time and space and blogging definitely took a back seat. 

I wanted to give a long detailed explanation to my absence but I'm going to save you the boredom and just say two major developments happened in the past half year.
First : End of Jan 2016 we moved out of Minneapolis to the Queen city of Charlotte, North Carolina. Although we are still settling down and miss our old friends and familiar places, we have started liking this city and have started making new friends. We bought a new house and Lil'Appu started Kindergarten this year and seems to happy with all his new buddies. So lots of things kept us really busy.

Second: Lets hear some Drum-rolls....we had our second bundle of joy almost a week after Appu's 5th b'day. Yes, my lil'Appu has a little sister now. On July16th,2016 our baby girl, Mihika was born!
So being pregnant until July 16th and being a new Mommy to a newborn from July16th were the other things that I was upto in between all this shifting, house hunting, office work and settling down...Lol!!

We are simply happy to be new parents again and Appu is a dotting big brother who can't seem to get enough of giving her hugs and kisses. We are both happy and super busy with a newborn at home and she is obviously taking up all my time. Our baby girl is 2 months old and times flying past and we are doing our best to absorb all the baby cuteness.

I haven't really bothered with much cooking or baking in a long time. Nothing that was blog worthy at least. Last week however I was feeling a bit relaxed and baby Mihi was being a very good girl so I decided to make a simple batch of Chocolate brownies. I was actually able to make them undisturbed while baby Mihi slept and they came out perfect :-)
I wasn't even planning to blog about it, but when I shared a pic of the brownies on FB, I got hundreds of requests for the recipe and I felt these brownies have to be shared, they are just that good!

I didn't take any good pics, just took few on my mobile and sharing those here. These brownies are almost fudge like, very chocolaty and chewy and the walnuts added a perfect crunch. If you do not prefer walnuts add chocolate chips for a little bite. The top has a nice flaky crust as well as you can see.

Chocolate Brownies with Walnuts

 Makes around 16-20 brownies

You'll Need 

5 oz Semi-sweet Chocolate (chopped)

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted Butter, cut into pieces

2 Tblsp Cocoa powder

1 cup granulated white Sugar

1 tsp Pure Vanilla extract

3 large Eggs (at room temperature)

¾ cup All-purpose flour

Salt, a pinch 

¾ cup chopped Walnuts

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350F.  Grease and line an 8" square baking tray with parchment paper. (I used a 9” square pan, an 8” square pan gives thicker brownies)

2. Add 5oz chopped chocolate and chopped butter pieces in a glass bowl and melt them over a double boiler (place the bowl over a saucepan of simmering hot water)

3. Once completely melted remove from heat, add cocoa powder and sugar and whisk gently until the sugar is incorporated well.

4. Next whisk in the vanilla extract and eggs one by one beating well.

5. Finally, stir in the flour, salt and walnuts.

6. Pour into baking tray and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a little batter and a few moist clumps clinging to it. Do not over bake.

Recipe Source: Joyof Baking

I'm not going to make any promises that I'll blog frequently from now but I'm surely going to try to be more regular here. It's such a relief to get back to doing old things that I loved doing and it's great to get back in touch with you all. Do say Hi in the comments if you happen to visit :-) 

-Manju