How is everyone doing now Lockdown is official? I'm still working from home, but actually found it harder today. I know this is the right decision (and think it's probably overdue) but could feel that I was fretting more and concentrating less. It doesn't help that I'm creating and linking authority files, which is not the most enthralling of tasks however necessary it might be. So when I finished up for the day I decided to make brownies. I love baking and find it quite relaxing - you follow the instructions and then there's cake, what's not to like?
This particular recipe is one I found in a cookbook of my mum's when I was a teenager. She baked with us occasionally when we were little, and I did more baking in Home Ec classes, but at the time this was a new thing for me! It's a very straightforward recipe, more cake-y than an authentic brownie usually is, but it is very, very hard to get wrong. It is my go-to recipe if I need to take cake to something as they're easy to transport, everyone likes a brownie, they're quick to make and I almost always have the ingredients in the house. If you need to bake something gluten-free, then it's a basic sub for GF flour here with no other faffing around.
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| Unappetising butter/sugar/egg combination |
Some time before you intend to make this, take your butter out of the fridge. You need 125g of it for this and you're going to cream it with 225g of soft, dark brown sugar. It will look deeply unappetising at this stage, for which I apologise. Add two eggs (I had to try the "do they float" trick with mine, which were somewhat out of date) and a teaspoon of vanilla essence and beat until smooth. If you don't have vanilla essence, then rum and bourbon are both excellent substitutes. Sieve together 90g plain flour, 1 tsp baking powder and 50g cocoa powder and fold it in to the wet ingredients. Optional at this stage is to add up to 100g of something else - chopped nuts, or chopped chocolate. I had both plain and white chocolate in my supplies, so chopped a mix of both and folded it in.
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| It doesn't look much better when it's about to go in the oven |
Spoon into a square baking tin and bake at 180C for 25 minutes. A skewer should come out clean, but if they're still a bit gooey that's not a bad thing. Cut into squares - I usually do 16, but it depends how big you like them. They're best warm, but as I made them before I made dinner I foolishly did myself out of that.
This was very soothing to read, thank you. I feel like we need to break down baking into more categories than just bored. It's definitely therapy sometimes. And, as you wisely say, at the end there's cake.
ReplyDeleteThis looks lovely. I don't really bake so don't have many supplies, but in this time, I think I need to broaden my horizons and bake something comforting like this. Thank you for the inspiration.
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