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but damn was tonight’s sunset freakamazing!
I have some sort of a love/hate relationship with brownies. I love fudgey brownies, I love the thick chewy goodness texture they have. If I were put in a room with an endless supply of them I’d probably die in a matter of hours with a popped stomach cavity spilling chewed up brownie bits out of my eyeballs. I love cakey brownies, I love the crunchy top with its slight cracking and crispy bits that dig into your mouth as you chew. I hat the way that it seems almost impossible to get the two together, either you’ve got a lovely crust OR you’ve got an intense chocolatey middle. Flour Power in London has a very good (and very large) cakey brownie with a close texture that’s a bit fudgey and I certainly remember the brownies from when I was living in New York practically being a religious experience, but rather than taking a spin on the wheel of Brownie Roulette every time I need chocolatey baked good goodness I decided to try and make my own. After a lot of different tries and a lot of well earned “brownie mix for the chef” I think I’ve come close enough to a brownie that I like to stop tinkering with it. The inside texture is definitely a fudgey brownie, but it’s got a fair bit of crust on the top to give it that real brownie feel. Everybody’s got a different taste in brownies, but for me this is getting close to as good as it gets.
But don’t take my word for it… the recipe is super easy, so try it out. Afraid I’m all back to metric measurements since the imperial ones sort of confuse me, but if you happen to be enamoured with cups and pints and ounces then there are plenty of handy converters out on the net to get the amounts right.
Really Really Chocolatey Brownies
175g of salted butter
250g of white caster sugar
125g of light brown sugar
3 eggs (or two really really big ones)
a tsp of vanilla essence
100g of cocoa powder
100g of flour
(add optional chocolate chips to make it even more chocolatey. I’d advise using 100g since then you can say that it’s got twice as much chocolatey stuff in as flour, even though it does do strange things to the baking time.)
a pinch of baking powder
a pinch of salt
First off, grease up a big baking tray or line it with greaseproof paper and set your oven to 160 degrees C. It should warm up nicely in the ten minutes it takes you to do the mix.
Warm the butter up in the microwave until it’s starting to get soft, then add in all the sugar and beat it until it goes creamy. Beat the eggs and vanilla then add them to the mix and whisk everything together until it’s lump free and delicious. Sift in the cocoa powder and then all the rest of the ingredients a little at a time fold it in then keep on whisking until everything is evenly combined, you’ll need to switch from a whisk back to a spoon near to the end, which is great because it means there are more utensils to lick. The mix should be just about solid enough so that it stands up on its own and look kind of like mud pies… the ones made from mud.
Transfer the mix to the baking tray and spread it as thick as you like your brownies, it will hardly rise at all so just use your judgement on how thick to spread it. Bake the tray for about 20 minutes, but check it every so often and if it’s starting to get hard on the top then that’s time to take it out and stop. Let it cool for 5 minutes then cut it into squares and leave it too cool off entirely.
After an hour out of the oven it’ll be just above room temperature and seriously delicious… but it gets even better after a day or two, so make two batches so you’ve got some to keep.
mmmm…. brownies…
In honour of the momentous holiday I decided to cook myself a romantic meal for one!
Aaaaah nothing says “I love myself” better than a large hot serving of weisswurst, saurkraut, potatoes and cabbage served up with an unhealthy looking side of whiskey. What could make it better? Why nothing apart from having spent the rest of the evening before eating in the warm comfort of a kung fu training session and the rest of the evening after watching Lupin III movies and eating brownies. Garrrr, feel the manly single awesomeness! There’s a little voice at the back of my head that says this has something to do with my chronic singleness and is not a good idea at all… but it gets softer after a high cholesterol meal.
There really is something singularly unattractive about this whole load of food, but really it is amazing. (Any meal that you feel fine sticking two hard boiled eggs into the side dishes just for the hell of it and have to have a really big jar of mustard next to it, can never be wrong.) German food definitely ranks number 1 in the World’s Least Romantic Cuisine Competition (with all the various British Isles not too fr behind) and so there’s no way it could ever be made to look anything apart from “hearty” or “filling”…. or maybe at the very best “wholesome” it never it gets a look at “classy” or “elegant”, but dammit man, that’s the whole point?
Now… where’s my whiskey?!
