Name: Chocolate gingerbread brownie bars with fudgy icing
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 55 min
Yield: Cuts into 15 bars
Ingredients: 400g dark chocolate broken into chunks; 25g cocoa powder; 250g golden caster sugar; 250g butter; 1 tbsp ground ginger; 140g ground almond; 6 large eggs separated; 100g butter cubed; 50g dark chocolate use a bar broken into pieces, or chips; 50g cocoa; 200g icing sugar sifted; 2 tbsp ground ginger; few chunks crystallised ginger chopped into small pieces

Chocolate gingerbread brownie bars with fudgy icing

These luxurious bars are based on a classic flourless cake, so they're rich and light in equal measure

55 min total 20 min prep 35 min cook Cuts into 15 bars 553 cal

Instructions

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1 Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Grease a 20 x 30cm cake tin, and line the base and sides with baking parchment. Melt the chocolate, cocoa, sugar and butter together in a saucepan over a very low heat. Once the chocolate and butter have melted and sugar dissolved, remove from the heat and stir in the ginger and almonds, followed by the egg yolks, one at a time.
2 Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Using a metal spoon, stir a couple of spoonfuls of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture to loosen before very gently folding in the rest.
3 Gently scrape into the tin. Bake for 30-35 mins until the top looks set and the centre doesn’t wobble too much. Sit the cake tin on a wire rack and leave to cool completely.
4 Once cool, make the icing. Put the butter, chocolate, cocoa, icing sugar, ground ginger and 4 tbsp water in a pan. Gently heat, stirring, until you have a smooth icing. Pour over the cake (still in its tin), leave for 1-2 mins to cool slightly, then scatter over the ginger. Cool completely (you can also store in the fridge if you bring out to room temperature about 20 mins before serving) before cutting into bars.