Chocolate Brownie and pastry – why had I not thought of this before?!

One of the things I love about leftovers is that they make me use my imagination. Today I had a very ripe banana and some leftover pastry from making quiche at the weekend. In trawling Pinterest for banana recipes (saved here for a rainy day) I came across some wonderful brownie recipes and an idea was born.

My sister came to taste-test the invention, the verdict was 10/10 when warm and 9/10 when cold. Not bad!

The recipe I decided to base the brownie on was a vegan one from the blog ‘recipes from a pantry‘. I halved the recipe because I had only one banana, which also happened to be the right amount for the leftover pastry (more by luck than judgement!). I also didn’t add the additional peanut butter because I wanted the cocoa flavour to stand out. The leftover pastry was just normal ready-roll pastry from the supermarket, so the tarts weren’t vegan. If any of my vegan friends have recommendations for pastry recipes that would be fabulous!

(Update: I have now found out that ‘Jus-Rol’ shortcrust pastry is vegan.)

I have a sneaking suspicion that these would be wonderful with almond butter instead of peanut butter, along with some flaked almond. I will give it a go and let you know.

Ingredients

• Shortcrust pastry (shop bought or homemade)
• 1 (very) ripe banana
• 90 g caster sugar
• 1.5 tbsp rapeseed or canola oil
• 1.5 tbsp almond milk
• 1/2 tbsp smooth peanut butter
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 45 g plain flour
• 1.5 tbsp cocoa powder, unsweetened
• 1.5 tbsp chocolate chips, dark (I used 100% cocoa chips which are supposed to be used for drinking chocolate, so very dark!)

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 180^oC / 160^oC Fan.

Roll out the pastry and use a large biscuit cutter (mine was 88mm) to cut the pastry into rounds. Gently push the pastry into a ‘fairy cake’ tin. If you use a muffin tin (which is bigger) you will need larger rounds of pastry.

Mash the banana into a bowl and then mix in the sugar, oil, milk, peanut butter and vanilla extract. Next, stir in the dry ingredients followed by chocolate chips.

Spoon the mixture into the pastry cases. The brownie only rises a little, so you can fill them almost to the top.

If you have excess pastry then you could add jam to the remaining cases – note that you always need less jam than you think because it bubbles up! If you have excess mixture then you could use paper cases in the same tin and make some little cakes.