Barcelona Brownie Bars

The Heavenly Cake Bakers are doing Barcelona Brownie Bars from Rose’s Heavenly Cakes this week. I made my version on Saturday, and took them (along with Rose’s butter dipped dinner rolls!) up to my uncle’s place for Thanksgiving yesterday. Not traditional Thanksgiving fare, but Grandma was already supplying pumpkin pie, so I figured it couldn’t hurt. My co-workers can wait until next week for their first taste of Heavenly Cakes. 🙂

Here’s my favourite shot of the (mostly) finished product:

The brownies are supposed to be baked in financier molds, but I didn’t have time this week to go find one. Hopefully I’ll have one before the next recipe that calls for them. So, I did what Rose had suggested in the comments on the recipe on her website — did 1.5 times the recipe, and baked them in an 8″ square pan. I also decided to go with the variation Rose suggests — dried cherries macerated in Kirsch (the guy at my local LCBO said he hadn’t seen/heard of Cherry Heering in a decade) instead of pecans. I asked my husband his opinion on which he’d prefer, and he said “I’ve had lots of brownies with nuts in them, but never any with cherries, so do that.” 🙂

I started out by chopping up the cherries and getting them soaking in booze.  You can see the dough for my rolls just starting its first rise… and you can also see Rose’s Bread Bible there, too!

Next was melting the chocolate for the ganache plugs. I decided to use Cacao Barry 66% dark chocolate “Origine Mexique” couverture. This was leftover from a wedding cake I made for my cousin in August.

I melted the chocolate and mixed it with the warmed cream, for the ganache plugs.  I decided to put it pretty much straight into a ziploc bag for piping later, because I figured it’d be easier to pour into the bag rather than trying to scoop it out of the bowl later.  I’m using a ziploc bag, because my real piping bags are currently rather a pain to get to.  And my toolbox full of cake decorating supplies in the cabinet is currently covered in bits of plaster dust, which I really didn’t feel up to disturbing.

Plus, hey… less dishes can’t possibly be a bad thing.  Hm.  Looks like it’s about that time.  Dontcha love how there’s no counter space by the sink?

Here are some other pictures of our kitchen, just for laughs.  We’ve just finished renovations part 1.  The kitchen is next, when we have the money for it.

So, while the ganache is cooling, it’s time to mix up the brownies. First make sure the pan’s ready.  Don’t forget to get the oven preheated. Mine’s a horrible digital thing that won’t tell you the current temperature of the oven, just what it’s set to, so I have to keep a thermometer in it to have any sort of clue where it’s at.

Then, once the butter & chocolate are melted together, get the rest of your ingredients ready.

Read the recipe one more time before you start mixing. “beat in the cream cheese until only small bits remain.” Cream Cheese? What cream cheese? Oh wait.

Ok, now that those are baking, I guess it’s time for more dishes. Whee!

Remember that ganache from earlier? I didn’t eat it. Like a good little girl, I followed Rose’s recommendation to poke holes in the brownies and fill them with chocolate.

I had leftover ganache, and figured these could use more chocolate (ha!) so, I just drizzled it over the top.

The verdict: Absolutely delicious. I think even my grandfather liked them. Jay (my husband) did point out that it’s probably best to warn people that they’re made with dark chocolate, so they don’t expect to bite into something super sweet. I don’t know how much that had to do with my using chocolate with a higher cocoa percentage — mine was 66%, vs Rose’s suggested 60-62%.