Chocolate Hazelnut Brownie Hearts

This Instructable will teach you how to make simple, delicious chocolate covered heart shaped hazelnut brownies for valentines day.

Ingredients (The photo is missing some)

For the brownies:

1 cup of butter
2 cups sugar
0.5 cups of cocoa
4 eggs
1 cup flour
1 cup hazelnuts, chopped or ground.
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

For the topping

1.5 cups semisweet chocolate
0.25 cups whipping cream
decorating material (white chocolate, candy, sprinkles, nuts etc.)
 

       Preheat the oven to 350° Cream the butter, sugar and cocoa together in a large or medium bowl with an electric mixer if needed. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Add the flour and fold in the chocolate chips and walnuts. Pour or spoon the mixture into a greased 13x9 inch pan for roughly 30-40 minutes. When a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, remove brownies from oven and let them cool until they are firm.

       When the brownies are firm, use a heart shaped cookie cutter to press shapes into the brownies. The first few might be hard to remove and it may help to cut them in half before pressing. You can make about 20 brownies, and save the scraps for eating separately. Put the hearts on a plate and put them in the freezer for about 30 minutes to make them really firm.

       While the brownies are in the freezer, start to prepare the frosting. Take the 1.5 cups of chocolate chips, put them in a saucepan and bring them to boil at medium-high. Stir them till they are relatively smooth then add the whipped cream, if desired. Add more than 0.25 cups of cream if you want a ganache topping (about 1 cup) but I didn't this time, and just decided to add a bit of cream. When this is smooth, remove the saucepan from the burner and take the brownies out of the fridge.
        Using a knife, spoon or spatula, cover each of the brownies in chocolate and put them on a prepared baking sheet lined with parchment paper. When you have done this, place them in the fridge to harden the chocolate. If you are using sprinkles, nuts or candies it is probably a good idea to decorate the brownies with these before the chocolate completely hardens, so it will stick. I used only white chocolate to decorate these. If using white chocolate, first melt it in the microwave or on a burner, and spoon it into either an icing piper with a small tip or a plastic bag with a corner snipped off. Using this, pipe the chocolate on the brownies. Make creative, interesting designs, or simple boring ones, like I did.

       When you have decorated all the brownies, you are done! Hopefully you can make them a little more beautiful than I did.
To store these, cover and refrigerate them. These are great for gifts, eating by yourself, or parties.
Thanks for reading this instructable, leave any suggestions or comments below and if you liked this, please vote for me in the Valentine's Day contest.
Good Luck!