Friday 30 March 2012

Welcome back Brownies?


It has, again, been a while. But in the interim, I promise I have been doing exciting things, and so hopefully will once again fill this blog with photos and thoughts, rather than leaving it to the silent wastes of termtime. Before I launch into that though, here's finally a recipe! Hurrah! This was one that I adapted for a student newspaper feature I did last term, so if you've seen it, many profound apologies...but look again, because these are goooood.

Dark Chocolate Brownies
These are adapted slightly from my sister’s recipe, and are thick, dark, dense and rather gorgeous. Perfect warm with berries and cream, or munched on cheekily straight from the tin. Obviously try to buy good dark chocolate, but I’ve made these with half 70% and half Tesco value plain chocolate and can’t complain of the result. Also if the mixture seems a strangely gloopy one, do not worry

Ingredients
200g dark chocolate
250g butter
100g plain flour
80g hot chocolate powder, mine was slightly raspberry flavoured because that’s what I happened to have around and it was lovely! (or cocoa powder if you’ve remembered to buy any, and increase the sugar a bit to taste)
100g caster sugar
75g light brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
3 eggs

Preheat your oven to 180º (or 160 º for a fan oven) and grease or line a baking tin
Break the chocolate into a bowl with the butter and microwave on 30 second bursts, stirring in between each, until all melted together.
Add the flour and cocoa powder gradually and mix in, then the sugars. Sprinkle the baking powder over and give that a good mix as well.
Crack eggs in one at a time and mix in till you have a viscous thick chocolate-y mess (feel free to add in any nuts, fruit, chocolate chips in here)
Gloop the aforementioned mess into your baking tin and bake for around half an hour, until cooked but still a bit gooey. Keep an eye on it, the top does catch quite easily, but this has yet to be a major problem to the taste! Leave the brownie to cool completely in the tin, or as long as you can bear not to eat it. Enjoy!