The Best Cocoa Nibs Brownie with Orange Ganache

This time I´ll introduce a great recipe from an excellent book, Real Chocolate by Chantal Coady, dedicated to chocolate, savory dishes, sweets, drinks, truffles, all made with chocolatem, obviously.
Chantal has a chocolate house in London, Rococo Chocolate, with a variety of amazing chocolate forms and aromas. The book has basic and advanced recipes.

One recipe that caught my attention was ganache with water...Water? Yes! The cream ganache, which we use for cakes, pie fillings, truffles, generally prepared with equal parts of chocolate and cream. But this, as she explains, uses the fat and lecithin present in the chocolate, to make an emulsion, such as when mixing oil and vinegar to make a vinaigrette.

And yo know what? It worked really well, a creamy and is not so "heavy" cream as the original. In addition, water can be flavoured with coffee, tea or juice.

Just try it!

Orange ganache 

110 g good bittersweet chocolate (60% cocoa)
120 ml orange juice
1 tsp orange zest (optional)

- Cut the chocolate into pieces and melt, preferably in microwave
- Heat the juice to boil
- Add the juice a tablespoon at a time, while mixing well with a whisker. At first it hardens, but keep mixing and adding the juice until it becomes liquid. Don´t worry about this, it´ll get firmer.
- Add the orange zest, for a greater taste.
- Chill in refrigerator until it has the consistency of an cream.

Creamy Brownies with Cacao Nibs 

150 g butter
170 g good bittersweet chocolate
180 g sugar
Eggs 3
130 g flour
Pinch of salt
30 g cocoa nibs

- Grease and flour a 20 x 20 x 4 cm baking mold
- Preheat oven to 180°C
- Melt the chopped chocolate with butter
- Incorporate the sugar
- Incorporate the eggs one at a time
- Sift flour and incorporate with the salt to the mixture. Don´t overmixe
- Add the cocoa nibs, and mix again.
- Pour into the mold and even out the surface
- Cook for 18 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean

To finish

- When the brownies cool without removing from the mold, pour the cream ganache and spread envenly.
- Allow to cool in refrigerator and cut portions

If the surface of the cream cracks in the fridge, you can put it in the microwave for a few seconds to soften and level.
The ganache is perfect for capturing different flavors, perhaps, lemos, lavander, vanilla, mint, etcetera.

I hope you try it!