Basic Chocolate Brownies

Hey there, kiddiewinks! I thought it was about time that I posted a recipe, given that, between blogging about books, and cheese making courses, and travel bucket lists, it has now been two weeks since I dished something up.

These brownies are from the same Oxfam cookbook as the Fair Trade Toffee Brownies that I made six months or so ago, but which, strangely, don't appear anywhere near them in the book. It's set up in quite an odd way, with sections for desserts, chocolate and "oh my gosh I must have something sweet NOW" all totally separate from one another. Yeah. I don't get it either.

Note that I only had milk chocolate in the house, so these turned out tasting quite fudgy and caramel-y. I have written a note to myself on this recipe as follows:

Made it wholly with milk choc. Tasted like caramel. A little too buttery. Would be a great brownie base though - quite fudgy. Would probably benefit from adding nuts.

(did I mention? I don't think I did. I bought myself a little notebook to keep in my handbag and write recipe notes or food inspiration in. Or any other sort of inspiration, buuuut so far it's just food! It's quite handy because I'm terrible at remembering things. So I wrote that down 2 or 3 months ago - the first entry in my notebook, actually - and I'm really glad I did because even I can't remember the difference between every batch of brownies I ever made!)

I would say that if you actually followed the recipe and used the dark and white chocolate where it tells you to, it might turn out less fudgy. And yes, being less fudgy can be a good thing! I would also add some chopped walnuts (because I heart brownies with walnuts) and would also considering adding a little more flour to mop up the moisture (I think that ever since Cadbury changed their recipe, their milk chocolate is oilier. Boo. Either that or I put too much butter in it).

Edit: Huh. Maybe I need to rescind the above statement. I have written milk chocolate twice in my little notebook, with no mention at all of dark chocolate, and I only just realised it as I wrote the recipe out just now. I suggest replacing the second lot of milk chocolate with dark chocolate for the aforementioned reasons.

INGREDIENTS:

125g butter

200g milk chocolate + 40g milk (dark?) chocolate + 40g white chocolate (all chopped; keep separate)

200g sugar

120g plain flour

30g SR flour

2 large eggs, beaten

1tbsp cocoa

METHOD:

1. Preheat oven to 180oC. Grease and line 23cm square tin.

2. Melt butter with the milk chocolate. Cool and mix in sugar.

3. Sift flours together and add in cooled chocolate mixture.

4. Stir in eggs and 40g of milk/dark(??) chocolate. Spread in pan.

5. Sprinkle chopped white chocolate on top and stir through with a teaspoon.

6. Bake approx. 25 minutes. Cool in pan, cut into 24 pieces and dust with cocoa.

See them glistening temptingly? Yep. Brownies aren't supposed to glisten. See notes on chocolate and flour and so forth.

Mind you, they were still mighty tasty...