Chocolate brownies

The cocoa-based recipe I have used for a while came from The Stone Soup blog here and you will find the recipe further down her post through that link.

The YFG wanted to try a different recipe this week, and we did use one which involved melting real chocolate, but since it called for only 50g, I gave it a go - twice!  They came out really well the first time, but got slightly overcooked the second time, last night, because I popped the pan in the oven after I cooked the lamb for our tea, and then I went to eat, and slightly [totally!] forgot about them!  They are still very edible, but they rose and then sank again, so they are quite squishy.  It hasn't been a problem for the YFG who is still enjoying them...The recipe came from a handy little recipe magazine called My Favourite Recipes, which is a reader-recipe collection which comes out monthly and costs just £1 so I do buy it occasionally.

This is how we did it:

I lined a 23cm square tin, and preheated the oven to 160C as it is a fan oven.

Then we melted 50g dark chocolate, broken into squares, with 120g baking margerine, in a Pyrex dish over a pan of simmering water, stirring it occasionally.  We used Lidl's chocolate, at about 30p or less for a bar, so this cost about 15p for the chocolate.  Not bad!

Once that had melted properly, we stirred it into the dry ingredients: 225g granulated sugar, 50g plain flour, and 1tsp baking powder.  We also added two beaten eggs at this stage.  The recipe now calls for 120g chopped almonds, but these are rather pricey and I almost never buy them, so we didn't have any in the cupboard.  What we did have are the more affordable Chopped Mixed Nuts, which have a high proportion of peanuts, but there are still almonds in the mix.  So we added about 100g of chopped mixed nuts, and they distributed themselves throughout the cake.

Poured into the square tin, this took about 20 minutes to cook, but we wanted it to be only just cooked for that magical brownie consistency, so the first batch was better than the second because it was cooked more precisely!

If we have no chocolate in the house, the Stone Soup recipe is fabulous, but if there is just 50g of dark chocolate to be had, the YFG says that the second recipe is her favourite.  It could, of course, be made without the nuts, and with other additions.

I used to use this recipe for Weetabix brownies a lot, but I buy a lot less Weetabix these days as the family seem to have gone off them!  It is definitely one way of getting healthier cakes into people without a big taste difference.

So that is my collection of tried-and-trusted Brownie recipes.  Good luck if you try any of them x