Christmas Eve Brownies

Brownies, originally uploaded by mysterybridgers.

In an effort to try and make Christmas Eve a little bit special, we made chestnut brownies--here shown served with soy whip cream. The recipe is from Dolce Italiano. We had some italian chestnuts in a vacuum packed package that we got on sale at the store some time ago and were looking for a recipe in which we could use them to their full potential. Chestnut brownies seemed like a good choice. We had to obtain chestnut flour and grappa in order to make them, which proved fairly elusive. We went to 3 or 4 different places looking for chestnut flour and finally scored some at Andronico's--an upscale San Francisco supermarket-- and after passing over $30 bottles of grappa at other places, we got some cheap grappa at Bevmo (which actually turned out to be a pretty good grappa, but then I wouldn't know the difference). Sadly the chestnut flour was the same price as the grappa, $10, but we have plenty of both left over.

The brownies turned out more like a chocolate cake than brownies, but they were tasty--and I am not usually a big fan of chocolate. The chestnuts and chestnut flour gave the brownies a very earthy flavor that was very nice. I am eager to try some of the other recipes in this book because they all sound so delicious.