More for me, then

On Saturday evening, I was due to go to a Nutrimetics party at Leahs. I'd got my steak and kidney(less) pudding on to steam, and I still had a few hours before I had to go out, so I decided to make some chocolate brownies (p61) to take to Leah's.


This is another very straightforward recipe - you just melt together butter and cooking chocolate (I did this in the microwave, to avoid having to work around the steaming stockpot on the stove) then add flour, sugar, vanilla and beaten eggs. Combine this all to a smooth batter, pour into a sponge roll tin, and bake. See: easy.

As usual, I checked the brownie shortly before the official half-hour of cooking time was up, but it was nowhere near cooked, so I put it back in for the remaining five minutes. When I took it out, there was a thin crust on top, but underneath was still runny, so I added another five minutes, then another five. All in all, the brownie was in the oven for around 40 minutes, then sat in the tray for another 10 before I turned it out onto a tray.


The instructions state that the cooled brownie should be iced, but I refrained from doing so, firstly because I feel it's almost sacrilegious to taint a beautiful brownie with icing, but also because I happen to know the suggested icing is sweet to the point of sickliness, and the brownies had enough sugar in them already.

After Mum, Dad and I had performed some quality control on the brownies and pronounced them worthy, I piled some on a plate, dusted over a little icing sugar for effect, and wrapped the plate up ready to go. It was only a short while afterwards that I received a text from Leah saying the Nutrimetics lady couldn't make it and the evening had to be postponed.


Ah well. I packed up the brownies, not feeling terribly upset that I'd be forced to eat nearly all of them myself. There's a huge variety of brownies out there, but these ones have what I'd consider close to perfect brownie texture: soft, and almost slightly chewy. The flavour, on the other hand, needs a bit of tweaking: it's tasty, but very sweet, and despite all that melted chocolate, it's not actually all that chocolatey. A bit of added cocoa would definitely improve that - with little experimentation, you might find yourself with a near perfect brownie on your hands (or - more likely - in your belly).