Amazing Chocolate Brownie Recipe from the Cloud Forest

 The most delicious brown recipe starts with really good chocolate.

From the cloud forest of Ecuador comes an amazing cacao; 100%, dark, bitter, drying and earthy. When you hold the fresh baba in your hands, cover the fermenting pepas with freshly cut banana leaves, lay out the almendras to dry, roast the cacao to perfection, grind it into a pure paste, mold it, bring it back thousand of miles and finally melt it down again with a pound of butter, you can say that the brownie recipe that you are about to make may be your next favorite.

My house smelled like chocolate for 24 hours.

Amazing Chocolate Brownie Recipe - Mindo Chocolates

12 oz. 100% high quality pure chocolate/cacao

1 lb unsalted butter

8 eggs

4 cups sugar

2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp salt

1 cup flour

Oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9x15 pan. In a double boiler or bain marie, melt chocolate and butter. Let cool. Mix in sugar, and add eggs. Mix quite well until you have a uniform mixture.  Add in vanilla, salt and flour. Bake for 45 minutes. Voila. You will have the best brownies in the world. Let rest for at least 2 hours. I think the brownies are best cut into small two-bite pieces so you can keep eating them without any guilt.

And while your brownies are baking, take a peek at these photos I shot at a plantation we visited. Magical.

Nacional Ecuador Cacao - Puerto Quito

The Cacao Flower.

Cacao Plantation in Ecuador

A stunning tree, full of ripening cacao

Harvesting a ripe pod off the trunk of the tree

Ahh... the best part, eating our way through the plantation. Underneath that fabulous tasting fleshy fruit is the bitter cacao seed. If you ever get the chance to taste this fresh... do so... unforgettable.

Peace, love and another brownie - Megan

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