Here’s a wonderfully rich and gooey brownie with a great combination of textures as well as tastes. The soft, caramelised banana pieces and the crunchy biscuits complement each other really well.

Makes: 16 squares

Time: 20 – 25 minutes to prep. 35 – 40 minutes to bake. At least 60 minutes chilling in the fridge then 5 minutes to cut and finish off.

Level: Easy

Need: A 20cm (8”) square baking tin

Ingredients

100g/3½oz unsalted butter + a little to grease the tin
300g/10oz dark chocolate, broken into pieces
125g/4½oz golden caster sugar
125g/4½oz soft light brown sugar
75g/2½oz golden syrup
3 bananas (ideally two ripe* plus one more solid.)
4 medium eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
75g/2½oz plain flour
½ tsp salt
75g/2½oz broken biscuits (e.g. digestives)
16 dried banana chips, for decorating

*If you only have firm bananas, stab them a few times with a fork or knife and give them two or three 20 second blasts in the microwave to soften them. Take care opening them as they will be hot and possibly steamy.

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 160C / fan 140C / 325F / Gas 3. Butter & line the tin.

2. Put the chocolate into a bain marie on a low heat. While the chocolate is melting, put the butter, sugars and golden syrup into a large saucepan and gently melt. Stir well to make sure all the sugar dissolves.

3. Mash the two ripe bananas and mix into the melted butter, sugar and golden syrup.

4. Whisk the eggs and stir in the vanilla extract. Add this and the melted chocolate into the main mixture and beat until well mixed.

5. Sift over the flour and salt then fold in with the broken biscuits. Chop the remaining banana and stir in the pieces.

6. Spoon the mixture into the tin and smooth it if necessary. Bake for around 35 minutes. (It needs to be slightly wobbly when baked.) Remove from the oven, and leave to cool. Either turn it out now or leave in the tin to harden, but put it in the fridge as soon as possible. Keep in the fridge for at least an hour, overnight is better.

7. Turn out of the tin if you haven’t already done so, remove the paper and trim the edges. Using a sharp knife or a metal dough scraper, cut it into pieces, or cut it while still in the tin and remove piece by piece. Insert a banana chip in the top of each brownie. (If the top has formed a crust you may need to make a small cut with a sharp knife first.)

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Click this link for more tasty traybake recipes. In the meantime, here is a small selection of my brownies and blondies that you might want to try:

Honeycomb Brownies