This Chocolate Hazelnut Brownies recipe was in one of my old recipe books. Although it was called a ‘gateau’ and was sliced in half and sandwiched together with fresh cream. With more cream on the top. I looked at the recipe and thought it looked very much like a brownie recipe. Turns out, I was right. This is very much like a brownie recipe. A Chocolate Hazelnut Brownie recipe. And I really don’t see the need for the cream, so I left it out.

Despite not being a fan of dark chocolate, I usually use dark chocolate when I’m making brownies. So, I used it here too. But use milk chocolate, if that’s what you prefer. I find that there are sufficient other ingredients in brownies (probably the amount of sugar!) to not make it taste too much like dark chocolate, but just give it a rich, chocolatey taste. Just don’t offer me a square of dark chocolate to eat on it’s own. I will politely refuse.

There are a lot of hazelnuts in this recipe, so it’s not for you if you’re not a fan. I chopped mine by hand so I could control the size of the nuts and leave some larger pieces in there. As there isn’t a lot of flour in the recipe, you want to have most of the nuts finely chopped. This will help to give some structure to your brownies.

I haven’t tried these brownies with any other nuts, but I don’t seen any reason why you couldn’t substitute with a different variety of nut, if that’s what you prefer.

Other than that, there’s not a lot of baking advice for these Chocolate Hazelnut Brownies. Just be careful when you’re adding the eggs to the melted butter and chocolate as you don’t want to scramble your eggs. Add the eggs a little at a time and mix well. Or leave the chocolate and butter mixture to cool slightly before you start to add the remaining ingredients.

And be careful when you’re removing the brownies from you tin as they may crack a little, especially in the middle. But any broken pieces get claimed by the baker! And if you’re a fan of hazelnuts and are looking for a no-bake traybake, then you should try my No-Bake Chocolate Hazelnut Traybake.