passover week 2024 - white chocolate and macadamia brownies

passover week 2024 - white chocolate and macadamia brownies

• 14 Apr 2024

Having made a few complicated baked for this years Passover Week, I thought it was time to dial back the effort a notch and make a batch of brownies. In the past, I've found that Passover mix (equal quantities of superfine matzo meal and potato starch) makes excellent brownies so when I saw this Kimmy Gastmeier recipe in the April Delicious magazine for white chocolate, wattle seed and macadamia brownies, I decided to renovate the recipe for Passover. I left out the wattle seed as it doesn't have Passover certification and instead made some supercharged espresso - 1 tsp espresso powder to 2 tsp of boiling water.

It wasn't all smooth sailing of course. My 'Kosher for Passover' white chocolate failed to melt nicely so I had to resort to using a stick blender to whip the batter into submission but it all turned out well in the end.

Here's the recipe for you which makes a small batch of brownies. To make a larger batch double the ingredients and bake them in a 23 cm skillet. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

White chocolate and macadamia passover brownies
Ingredients

90g white chocolate, roughly chopped
60g unsalted butter, roughly chopped
80g white sugar
30g brown sugar
1 egg 
2 tsp strong espresso, cooled
½ tsp vanilla extract
75g Passover baking mix sifted with a pinch of salt
50g lightly toasted macadamia nuts, roughly chopped
Sea salt flakes

Method
Grease a small cast iron skillet and line with a piece of baking paper. Preheat the oven to 180°C, conventional.

Place the chopped chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Make sure the pan doesn’t touch the water. Leave untouched for 5 minutes before removing the bowl from the heat. Stir until the mixture is smooth before adding the sugars. Stir to combine.

Add the egg and beat until smooth, before adding the espresso, the vanilla followed by the Passover baking mix. Stir vigorously until the mixture becomes very glossy then pour the batter into the prepared pan. Scatter the chopped macadamias over the batter.

Place the skillet on the centre rack of the preheated oven and bake for 30-35 minutes or until the brownie is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the centre of the brownie comes out clean. Place the skillet on a wire rack and cool completely before removing the brownie from the skillet. Sprinkle with sea salt flakes and before cutting into pieces to serve.

I took the brownies into work and they were a hit. My workmates loved the soft base and the crunchy top.

That was the last bake for Passover Week 2024. See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian