Recipe: Kate's Chocolate Brownie-Panforte!

I had some dried fruit and nuts left over from the traditional panforte I made at Christmas. Wanting to use them up, I decided to make another panforte that was less festive, but still gluttonously gorgeous.
By adding more flour and cocoa powder this recipe has a distinctly brownie-like texture, the dried fruit & nuts giving it that extra bite. It went down a treat in my household and a small slice is perfect with a cup of coffee. Yum!

Butter (for greasing)
120g dried figs

80g dried apricots
(you can swap the figs and apricots around with dried fruit of your choice, e.g. dates, but stick to more than one kind - also I wouldn't recommend using raisins/sultanas!)

60g candied peel

160g nuts of your choice (I used a mix of blanched almonds, blanched hazelnuts, walnuts and pistachios)

100g plain flour

Small tsp baking powder

55g cocoa powder

1.5 tsp mixed spice (or a mix of your choice - cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, etc, are all good

2 large eggs

You will also need: a 23cm springform baking tin

1. Grease the bottom and sides of your baking tin. Line with baking paper, then grease again on top of that.

2. Weigh out your mixture of nuts then chop them up a little. It's up to you how 'chunky' you want the pieces of nut to be - I opted for medium sized chunks.

3. Weigh out then chop up your dried fruit - again, it's up to you how big the pieces are.

4.  Mix the fruit and nuts together, along with the candied peel.

5. In a large bowl, beat the eggs until they are pale and billowy.

6. Sift in the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, sugar and spice.

7. Mix well - you'll get a runny mixture that looks a bit like this:

8. Stir in the fruit and nut mixture.

9. Dollop this mixture into your baking tin and level the top.

10. Bake for 50 mins at 150 degrees celsius. Once cool, remove from tin.

11. Heavily dust with icing sugar. Then: devour!

Hope you enjoy this recipe, and if you use it, let me know how it turns out! x