Brownies

One thing I really hate about baking blogs is that if you’re looking for a recipe you have to scroll and skim through someone's smug story of self-discovery that led to whatever recipe you’re trying to find. I can’t be the only one who doesn’t give a crap if the author came up with the recipe while vacationing in Montauk or on crack fuelled bender.

And so...

Brownies

I found this brownie recipe in a cookbook I bought 12 years ago for no good or compelling reason. I altered it to add more chocolate.

Ingredients:

280-300g plain chocolate

250g butter/baking margarine

½ cup plain flour

½ cup cocoa powder

2 cups sugar, granulated or caster (don't get too hung up on the difference, it doesn't matter for brownies, whatever you have on hand is fine)

300-400g chopped assorted chocolate (I find this works best when 200g has a biscuit component, like Twix, cookie crunch etc., and 200g is straight white or milk chocolate)

4 large eggs (beating the eggs together at first makes things a bit easier but is not strictly necessary)

2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

Preheat an oven to 180˚ C

Line an 8 x 12 inch Pyrex baking dish with foil, and then baking paper.

Don’t believe baking paper is greaseproof. It isn’t, no matter what it says on the box. Always underline baking paper with foil and save yourself precious minutes scrubbing butter off your baking dish, cookie tray what-have-you.

Melt butter and chocolate together, let cool completely.

The amount of chocolate doesn’t have to be exact for this. I tend to start with three 100g bars, eat a few squares and melt the rest.

Mix together flour, cocoa powder, sugar and chopped assorted chocolate.

If you’re feeling fancy and you want to do more washing up, sift together flour and cocoa powder. This makes no real difference to the finished product.

Mix in the melted butter and chocolate mixture, eggs and vanilla extract.

Pour into the prepared dish, and bake for 50-60 minutes initially.

Once the top has become hard and crispy, cover loosely in foil to stop it burning.

The three phases of brownies in the pan are shown below: raw in the pan, crispy on top, covered loosely in foil. I know my oven door is dirty, I do not care.

These brownies may never pass the clean knife test, but common sense will tell you when they’re done. It's easy to tell the difference between melted chocolate and clingy raw batter on a toothpick/knife. If they've cooked for 90 minutes, they're done. One trick I use when there's still that little bit of brown on the toothpick/knife is to turn off the oven and leave the brownies in the oven while it cools. They cook that bit more, lose that last bit of excess moisture and hold their shape that bit more when cut. My last batch cooked for 90 minutes, then sat in a cooling oven for 24 hours. They were fanf*ckingtastic.

Cool brownies completely in baking dish.

Lift out and slice into desired size.

Below are the finished brownies, you can see the pull away nicely from the baking paper. It is easy to trim away edges if they're not your thing.

Don't attempt exercise for at least 2.5hrs after eating one of these.