Espresso and walnut iced brownies

A dense and moist brownies base, rich in coffee and chopped walnuts. A thick but fluid, slightly runny rich glaze, based on espresso, milk, butter and brown sugar.

From place to place, whole walnut halves and dark chocolate mocha beans to decorate everything :).

Recipe heavily adapted from here. (I worked my magic with adding walnuts and more cocoa in the base; and changing the glaze and the topping to better suit my fancies). 

Last year: Simple coconut brownies.
Two years ago: Amaretto colada, Easy home-made raclette (French-Swiss) and Pasta with spicy mascarpone sauce, artichokes and mushrooms.

P.S: I'm submitting this recipe to the Sweet Romania challenge of this month. 




Ingredients (for a 20 cm square dish):

• 60 ml water
• 2 and 1/2 tablespoons instant espresso powder 
• 75 g chocolate-covered espresso beans, finely ground
• 200 g brown sugar
• 75 g cocoa powder
• 62 g flour
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 125 ml canola oil
• 75 g walnuts, coarsely chopped

For the glaze:

• 1/2 teaspoon instant espresso powder
• 60 g butter
• 60 ml milk
• 200 g brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 9 walnut kernels to decorate
• 75 chocolate mocha beans to decorate (optional)

Heat the water until it starts to evaporate. Add the espresso powder to it and stir. Let it dissolve. Butter the baking dish and line it with baking paper. Preheat oven to 165 degrees C.

Add the beaten eggs, vanilla and the sugar to the espresso. Also add the oil and the ground espresso beans and mix well. Mix the cocoa, flour, salt and baking powder and mix them into the wet ingredients.

After all is well incorporated, add the chopped walnuts.

Mix gently, then pour everything into the prepared pan.

Put it into the preheated oven and let it bake for 50 minutes. Take out and allow to cool a bit :)

To make the glaze, melt the butter together with the milk, espresso and vanilla in a small saucepan.

Stir well until all is evenly combined. Remove from the heat. Add the sugar, cocoa and salt and mix until even.

Pour it over the brownie base:

Also add the walnut halves (imagine you'll cut it into 9 squares later, so place the walnuts in the center of each future brownie). :) Also add the chocolate mocha beans. :)

Put it away for 2-3 hours so everything hardens up enough to slice and eat :)
Obviously, the hardest battle of this recipe is resisting the smell :). I put them away on the balcony, door tightly shut, and still the temptation was almost overwhelming.
But my patience was definitely rewarded later. :)

Enjoy! :)