Desserts

Today I had my first attempt at making brownies, aided by the wife who also had never made them – sounds like a recipe for disaster right? Well it actually turned out pretty good. The smell that has filled our house is mouth watering, I daren’t open a window as the whole street may flock around my house, drooling, like a hungry scene from The Walking Dead.

Anyway seen as though we struck lucky with our first attempt I thought I’d share my success and give the recipe I used.

Ingredients

3 Large Eggs

275g Caster Sugar

85g Plain Flower

185g Bourneville dark chocolate (any dark chocolate will do, I just had this in already)

185g Unsalted Butter

40g Cocoa Powder

50g White Chocolate and 50g Milk Chocolate (again this doesn’t have to be the expensive stuff, I bought a 100g bar of Cadbury’s Winter Wonderland Chocolate which was already mixed as it was on offer )

Recipe

Chop the unsalted butter into cubes (easier to melt) and break the dark chocolate into individual pieces.

Add both to a bowl and begin to melt over a pan of boiling water.

Once melted, take the bowl off and leave the mix to cool down to at least room temperature.

Pre-heat your oven to gas mark 4.

Cut out some grease proof paper and put it to the bottom of a shallow tin.

Mix the flower and cocoa powder and sieve them into a bowl to make sure no lumps are left.

Chop the chocolate into smallish pieces.

Mix the eggs and sugar in a bowl with an electric whisk. You will know this is done when the mixture becomes really pale.

Pour the cooled down chocolate mixture over the egg and sugar mixture and slowly begin to start folding it in. Use a figure of 8 formation with the spatula, do this in different directions or alternatively turn the bowl as you fold it together. Do not rush this as the air needs to stay in the mixture.

Once the mixture is complete and all one colour (brown) start to sieve in the cocoa and flour mix. Again, slowly fold this in as you do it.

Pour your finished mixture into the tin that you prepared earlier. Place it in the already pre-heated oven on the middle shelf for 25 minutes.

Once 25 minutes has passed gently pull out the tin and gently shake – if the middle of the brownie starts to wobble then place back in for a further 5 minutes.

Don’t worry if the top looks like its cracking around the sides like this, this is normal (apparently)

Now leave it to cool, resist the temptation to cut into it until it is completely cold.

This is what our finished ones looked like cut up

Our 9 year old son has recently been set some homework from his school which he had to choose a subject about the Romans. All his friends were doing sports and leisure so we said why don’t you do about Roman feasts and we’ll find a recipe to make so he could take it in. We didn’t realise how tricky it would be as we don’t have the ability to roast a wild boar or make ostrich ragout, we are in short supply of both wild boar and ostrich in the North of England. Luckily we did a Google search and came across this fantastic little recipe courtesy of EatingPlaces (a blog here on WordPress, click for the recipe).

We went out and bought the few ingredients needed to make these tasty little treats and set to it. It only takes about 1.5 hours and an hour of that is to let the dough set in the fridge.

They have turned out really well, and they are delicious. I’m sure they’ll be a big hit with his class and more importantly his teachers.

So thanks for posting the great recipe EatingPlaces. Here are a few pics of our finished cookies.