Jaffa Cake Brownies

Hello and Happy Christmas. I have not blogged in ages as, well, it's been Christmas and sometimes (only sometimes) real life takes priority. So here we are: post Christmas but not post Christmas food. I thought I was restrained this year but I still seem to have a lot of food in my kitchen. My husband asked me to bake him something to take for him and his friends to eat after their bike ride tomorrow, so I took the opportunity to experiment a little with the hope of clearing some of if out of my house before it settled on my hips.

I bought one of those massive tubes of Jaffa Cakes. 5 packets of 12 cakes = 60 biscuits glaring at me in a fit of uneaten pique (along with the clementines going soft in the largely ignored fruitbowl). I refuse to be looked at in such a way by anything without eyes, so they had to go.

I am too lazy to halve my favourite chocolate cake recipe so this makes 2 batches.

 My favourite chocolate cake recipe

185g butter (or Stork, which I usually use for baking)
2tsp vanilla (oops, I forgot that)
1.5C sugar
2C SR flour
1/4C clementine juice (about 4 fruits)
3/4C water
3 eggs
2/3C cocoa

1. Preheat oven to gas mark 4 or 180C.

2. Prepare brownie tin by greasing and lining it with baking paper. Put a layer of Jaffa Cakes cake side down.

3. Put all the ingredients in a mixing bowl. Add the butter first, then the cocoa 2nd, unless you want your kitchen to be covered in cocoa dust. Mix until it's all the same colour (I use a hand mixer on high for 2-3 mins) and nice and smooth.

4. Pour half the mixture evenly over the Jaffa Cakes and bake on the middle shelf until cake springs back when touched (around 20mins in a normal oven, or whenever my temperamental oven feels like it.

5. leave to cool in pan and then lift out on the paper. I cut mine on the paper then lifted them up rather than avoid any faffy turning out and turning them back over.

 these were too big, so I cut them in half again after taking the photo.

The end result are lovely. The Jaffa Cake jam bit didn't melt at all so is still visible, and the dark chocolate on them added a nice richness to the brownies. I was very impressed. The 2nd batch were made with the cake mixture first and the Jaffa Cakes added to the top for no reason other than I was also trying to cook dinner and forgot to put them in first. They weren't as good because the cake part of the Jaffa Cake was on top so they went crunchy and I didn't like the texture as much.

It's my favourite use of leftovers so far.