Brownies on a winter’s day

9 January 2010

For my last birthday, the one where I became I-don’t-always-remember-how-old, Lauren gave me The Hummingbird Bakery recipe book. Suzy came to tea last night and so I thought it was about time I delved into the fattening pages of the book and made brownies for our dessert. As they’re somewhat too squodgy to put in an envelope and post, Lauren and the rest of you will have to be satisfied with either licking your computer screens, or making your own from the recipe below. I hope you all like chocolate and sugar, because they’re pretty much the only ingredients.

You will need:

200g dark chocolate
175g unsalted butter
325g caster sugar
130g plain flour
3 eggs

Preheat the oven to 170ºC / 325ºF / Gas 3.

Weigh and roughly chop the chocolate. Though now in handy bite-size pieces, do not eat it.

Weigh the butter or margarine. Definitely don’t eat it if it’s margarine.

Put the chocolate and butter in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water …

… and melt together until smooth.

Remove the chocolate from the heat.

Weigh the sugar, knock out the big lumps and …

… stir into the chocolate until well combined.

Weigh the flour. Hope that you have enough, because it’s been snowing for a few days now, which means that people have turned into survivalists and are emptying supermarket shelves of every product as fast as they can.

Add the flour to the chocolate mixture and stir until well incorporated.

Finally, stir in the eggs …

… and transfer it all to a bigger bowl in order to be able to stir the mixture until it is thick and smooth with enough venom without throwing it across the counter.

Pour the mixture into a 33 x 23x 5 cm baking tray, lined with greaseproof paper. I used magic Cake Release instead of lining the tray, because it’s magic.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 30-35 minutes, or until flaky on the top, but still soft in the centre. Be careful not to overcook, otherwise the edges will become hard and crunchy.

Leave to cool completely before slicing. Take great care to eat all the rubble that is inevitably created in the slicing process. Share some with others for manners, but not too much.

Eat.

Posted in: food, Lauren the best, photos

Comments

One Response to “Brownies on a winter’s day”

Cupcakes : dreamdust
9th February 2010 @ 10:55 pm

[...] is another recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. The brownies were great, but these chocolate and hazelnut cupcakes are marriage material. They’re also a [...]