Best brownie recipe ever, ever, ever

While I was house sitting, I made up a batch of brownies from their recipe, 'cos the kids (and I) had churned through most of the box that was in the freezer and I didn't want their mum to come home only to find the cookie tins empty and in need of urgent re-filling.

Longest sentence ever, sorry.

But, this particular brownie recipe is SO GOOD (think dark, fudgey, dense, rich) that I stole it and brought it back to my house.

And lucky you, I'm about to share it.

I think it comes from a Nigella book, not sure 'cos I'm dealing with a photocopied page....

but here it is:

Brownies

You will need:

375gm unsalted butter (13.2 oz)

375 gm good quality dark chocolate (13.2 oz)

6 large eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

500 grams caster sugar (1lb 1.6 oz)

225 grams plain flour (8 oz)

1 teaspoon salt

300 grams chopped walnuts (10.6 oz)

• Heat the oven to 180C/355F.

• Line your brownie pan, the sides as well as the base.

• Melt chocolate and butter together in a heavy based, decently large pot.

• In a separate bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar and vanilla.

• In another bowl, measure out your flour and add the salt.

• When the chocolate has melted, let it cool a little before adding the egg mixture. Actually, I find if I whisk the egg into the chocolate a little at a time, I don't need to wait for it to cool.

• Add the nuts and the flour.

• Mix well until smooth then scrape into your lined brownie pan.

• Bake for about 25 minutes.

• When it's ready, the top will be dried and paler but if you test the middle it will still be dark and gooey. Perfect.

• Don't let them overcook, or they dry out and you lose the dark, rich texture.

Notes: you can do without the walnuts if you so desire, although if you've only ever had the store bought, pre-shelled variety you will be pleasantly surprised if you taste fresh-out-of-the-shell walnuts. I didn't add 300 grams as the kids had scoffed some, so it was more like 200 I think.

I made this with spelt flour and it works as well as regular wheat flour.

Next time I'll try the rapadura, though I think I'll stop there with adjustments. This one's just too good to fiddle with too much. I'm not kidding myself that it's at all healthy but I'm willing to over-look that in this instance.

Lastly, these are great stored in the fridge, or even better, stored in the freezer.

Now, if you want the yummiest mud cake ever, my sis is claiming that title right now so pop over to her to get that recipe.

I can hear those brownies singing my name right now, from my deep freeze.....I must resist!

(Or I won't sleep, dark chocolate keeps me awake! But you have one, go on...)

Homemade birthday cakes

I don't claim to know how much a store-bought decorated cake costs as I have never bought one, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be much cheaper to make your own.

And most probably it will taste better and if you like, it could be better for you, too.

This year, my about-to-turn 5 year old requested a Batman ice cream cake.

Um, right.

That means I won't be using my best ever birthday cake cake recipe.

And I even resorted to the idea that I would source and buy the Batman decal for the top of said ice cream cake. Because my decorating skills......and time and patience....only stretch so far.

Except by the time I came to this realisation, it was Friday afternoon before a long weekend.

And I needed the cake for Monday of course.

So, a trip to the grocery store to buy 2 x 2 litre tubs of ice cream, a rummage through the cupboards to unearth some marshmallows (expired but hey, they worked) and the appropriate colours, hubby on the net finding the Batman insignia and wah lah!

I was ready to cake it up.

My idea was to squash the ice cream into the correct sized spring form tin....that's the circle tin with the removable base, and make some marshmallow fondant with which to decorate the top.

And, it worked, see?

The marshmallow fondant recipe is here.

I used yellow colour and tumeric for the yellow and I mixed cocoa and black colour for the black. Although to get it really black in a short space of time (it was nearly 10pm Sunday night) I painted black food colour directly on it.

Now, I'm not big on my kids eating food colouring, or marshmallows for that matter, but I was 99.99% sure they would not want to eat this topping.

It certainly tastes ok but it's just not their thing, so I was happy enough adding as much colour as I needed.

Phew, another birthday cake success.

Note to self: be more organised, remember your 1st post of 2010!!

Bake Your Own Bread

I've been making all our bread for a while now, but the latest,

and by faaaaaaar the easiest bread I have tried is Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a Day.

This is a no-knead bread, which is why it is so quick and easy.

You quickly mix the dough in one bowl, then keep it in the fridge, taking a chunk out and cooking it whenever you need some bread.

And just LOOK at the results...mmmmmmm...

It looks tasty,

It slices well,

(well, it would if you could wait until it cooled to start hacking it up...)

And the whole family liked it.

Ticks all boxes.

There are a few benefits to making your own bread, and cost savings is only one of them.

Although you can often get fairly cheap bread, sometimes day old at the store or corner bakery, you'll find it's nowhere near as fresh (obviously, right?), or healthy, as your own home made bread.

For example, if you live in Australia, nearly all bread you can buy in the store has been fortified with various things, the latest being folate. (See my rant on that here)

And the long-term effects of extra folate on people who do not need it.....meaning anyone who's NOT pregnant.....are unknown.

So, making your own makes sense all round.

Buy your flour in bulk, either in the store (though check if it's had folate added) or online to keep costs minimal.

To store it, a bayleaf in the bag will keep bugs away, but try and find a lidded container for storing large amounts. Sometimes you can scrounge these sort of containers from delis or bakeries, where they may have stored yoghurt, pickles, jams or something similar.

Ask around.

Try out some of the different types of flours available. I use spelt flour, spelt being an ancient grain, higher in protein and lower in gluten than wheat flour. You could also try kamut flour, or experiment with gluten free bread. Or buy and grind your wheat, maybe sprouting it first.

The possibilities are endless.

And it makes the house smell so good!

Homemade bagels - by thermomix or hand

Ever made your own bagels? Bagels are not that big here in Australia, at least not round my area anyway. You can get them here and there but if you want them, what better way to have them fresh than to make 'em yourself?

Here's how...

Homemade whole wheat bagels.

Now of course I couldn't just follow the recipe to the letter, so I used spelt flour instead of wheat and I used my thermomix to do the hard work for me. And the spelt flour was white, as that's all I had to hand.

If you have a TM and want to mix these bagels in it, just measure everything in as per the recipe, mix on about 6 until it holds together (about 10-15 secs), then knead for 3 minutes.

Now, the only slightly awkward part of this process was the instruction to shape them to 'resemble a bagel'...



But they turned out very well, slightly wonky shapes not-withstanding, with that chewy and dense texture bagels are known for. Although I think I could have baked them for slightly longer than the 15 minutes set out in the recipe, maybe 20 would do it, just to give them a little more colour on the outside.



Yum, I'll make these again, now I need to find if they freeze well. They were so easy to make and cook, they'd be easy to make in bulk for use later.

I'll let you know what I find out...

$2 Tim tams - again!

$2 tim tams at Coles this week

Now, if I had any kind of self control when it comes to sweet stuff, I'd buy a swag of these and stash them in the freezer. But I don't. I may fool myself into thinking I do sometimes, but really, I don't. That once again became really obvious when I realised I had to make more caramel for topping my cupcakes, when what was leftover after making the cupcakes should have plenty. But it wasn't. Because in the end, there wasn't ANY leftover.

What to do with tim tams? Apart from eat them of course...

Tim tam cupcakes

Tim tam truffles - these would make a very cute gift

Tim tam thickshake - calories in a glass, anyone?

This version of a tim tam cheesecake

Or you could just do the tim tam slam



IF I had self control, I would buy these with the idea of making tim tam truffles closer to Christmas.
A cute, inexpensive, handmade gift idea.....the best sort.

Hmmm, maybe I'll have to put my self control to the test again....

How to make your own caramel sauce

Have you ever bought that caramel ice cream topping in a plastic bottle, the one you can buy in the supermarket, the one with the strange, slightly plasticky aftertaste and 1000 ingredients?

Ok, well I'm not speaking about any one product in particular but you get my drift.
Those type of products are expensive, they often contain preservatives, flavours and colours, they will NEVER taste as good as the recipe I'm about to give you and you're left with yet another plastic item that may or may not be able to be recycled.

Making your own real caramel sauce is quick, easy and only takes four ingredients.
And it's TO DIE for. It really is, don't make this if you have no will power because it will call your name from the fridge every time you pass it and you WILL NOT be able to ignore it.
Trust me on that.


Real Caramel Sauce

100 grams of butter (3.5 ounces)
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup golden syrup
1/2 cup cream

• Combine butter, sugar, golden syrup and cream in a heavy based saucepan.
• Put over low heat and stir occasionally with a wooden spoon until sugar is dissolved.
• Turn up heat to high and boil for at least 5 minutes.
• Take off heat and cool to room temperature.

This is the caramel sauce the day after it was made, when I took it out of the fridge to dollop some on a cupcake for hubby.
It is now lovely and thick and the blob I put on the cupcake slowly flattened itself out a bit and sat there looking extremely decadent. Then I put it in the microwave for a few seconds and it returned to a runnier state.

Either way, YUM!

Now to my mind this has several uses.

• It would make a lovely gift: a glass jar, a ribbon and a pretty label.

• Heat it up and dribble it over ice cream.

• Dollop it onto unadorned cupcakes.

• You could try the same trick I suggested with the chocolate syrup, pouring it over a hot cake and letting it soak in. You'd want to heat the syrup first to make it runnier.

• I wonder if you could even flavour milk or coffee with it.......I must try that.

• Eat it straight from the jar.

Go on, try it!

Homemade spelt bread, thermomix or by hand

There's nothing much better than the smell of fresh bread and that's what we've been smelling round here lately as I've taken to making my own on a regular basis.

And it's soooo good! My mum used to make all the bread for a family of eight, so I don't know what's taken me so long to get round to the idea of making my own. I do have a bread machine, but I haven't used that in a long while, partly due to now having a thermomix. The thermomix doesn't actually cook the bread for you, but it certainly does all the rest of hard work. That said, it is pretty easy to make this bread by hand, but seeing as I have a thermomix, I'm gonna use it!

Actually, the reason I now like to make my own is because I have become so much more aware of exactly what is put into our food. And why spelt? I use spelt instead of wheat for it's nutritious benefits, as well as it's flavour and texture. Spelt can sometimes be found in supermarkets, however I buy it in 5kg bags over the net and it gets delivered, just what I like.

Spelt bread by hand

1 tablespoon dry yeast
2 cups warm water
3 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons melted butter
2 teaspoons salt
5-6 cups spelt flour (any combo of brown or white)

• Mix yeast, water and honey in a large bowl and let it stand for 5-10 minutes.
• Stir in the butter, salt and 3 cups of flour.
• Add the remainng flour in small amounts until the dough becomes too stiff to stir, then turn out onto floured bench.
• Knead for about 6 minutes, but do not overwork the dough. Stop when it is smooth and elastic.
• Place in a bowl, cover and let it rise until doubled in size.
• Punch down the dough, and divide it between 2 smallish loaf pans.
• Cover and let it rise again.
• Heat oven to 175c (350f)
• Bake for 20 minutes or so, until it is brown on the top and smelling done. Mmm mmm!

Spelt bread in the thermomix
10 grams dry yeast
2 cups warm water
85 grams honey
75 grams butter
2 teaspoons salt
5-6 cups spelt flour (any combo of brown or white)

• Place chopped butter in TM bowl and melt on 90c, speed 3 for about 1 1/2 minutes.
• Add honey, warm water and yeast. Mix on speed 4 for 2 seconds then leave to sit for 5-10 minutes.
• Add salt and 3 cups of flour. Mix on speed 5 for 10 seconds.
• Add 2 more cups of flour, mixing on speed 5 for 10 seconds after each addition.
• Knead in TM for 2 minutes
• Place in a bowl, cover and let it rise until doubled in size.
• Punch down the dough, and divide it between 2 smallish loaf pans.
• Cover and let it rise again.
• Heat oven to 175c (350f)
• Bake for 20 minutes or so, until it is brown on the top and smelling done.

See? Couldn't be easier.

$2 Tim Tams.....hold me back!

I snuck in to Coles this afternoon and saw Tim Tams for $2. I resisted, but I think I shouldn't have, look at this clip on making Tim Tam truffles....

I wonder, if I bought some and froze them, just for making these for the odd special occasion, could I continue to resist......considering they are frozen and I would need to dig in the freezer to actually locate them and then wait for them to thaw a bit.....

I suspect not.

Maybe I will just buy one packet to try making Tim Tam Truffles. Although I don't think I'll put them on sticks. And maybe one packet to not share with anyone seeing as tomorrow is my child-free day. And one packet to share. And one packet to......................................................right, I see where this is going.

So, Tim Tams are on special at Coles for $2. The point of this post was to impart that nugget of information to you, but I did get a little side-tracked.

Now wiping drool off my keyboard...

Gingerbread men/women/witches....whatever you fancy!

My favourite gingerbread cookie recipe comes from the book The Witch In The Cherry Tree,

by Margaret Mahy. It's a cute little story and inside the back cover is a recipe for gingerbread witches. It never fails and is great for making a double batch of dough with, the dough freezes well and so do the baked cookies.


Gingerbread Witches
(obviously you can cut them into any shape you like)

115gm/4oz butter
1/2 (packed) brown sugar
2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon baking soda (bicarb soda)
3 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 cup warmed golden syrup or molasses

• Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
• Mix in dry ingredients and syrup till you have a dough.
• Knead till smooth.
• Roll out on a floured bench, cut into shapes.
• Place on greased tray and bake at 175c / 350f.

These can be kept simple for every day use, or dressed up with decorations and icing for special occasions. My four year old loves to help me make these, as he tries to snaffle up any off cuts before I see him....he doesn't yet know that mums have eyes in the back of their heads!

Cheesy crackers - great snack for the kids

,This is one of the recipes I use regularly, it saves me buying crackers from the supermarket that are full of all the things I would rather my kids didn't ingest. This recipe has all of five ingredients if you include the pepper, and the crackers can be rolled and cut into just about any shape. I do little little ones for my one year old and bigger shapes for other guy.


Cheesy crackers

1/2 cup of flour white flour
1/2 cup of brown flour (I use 1 cup of wholemeal spelt flour instead, works well)
140 grams of butter
225 grams grated cheese
1/2 teaspoon of pepper

• Put flour, butter, cheese and pepper into a food processor.
• Mix until it looks crumbly.
• Add water one tablespoon at a time until it pulls together.
• Refrigerate for 20 minutes. ( I have actually frozen the dough for around two weeks and it still comes out fine)
• Flour the bench, roll out very thin (they need to be thin to be crispy) and cut into shapes.
• Bake at 175c for about 15 minutes, or until slightly darkened. The darker they get, the crispier they are, but too dark and hubby says they taste like burnt cheese, hehe.

I store these in an airtight container in the freezer, and give them to the kids straight from the freezer. So I'm not sure how long they would retain their crispness if they were kept in the pantry instead.

Also, I make double the quantity of dough, because I am lazy and this means I just need to thaw the dough, then roll and cut the next time round.


One thing that does really help in the whole frugal/thrifty kitchen thing, is a decent freezer. I was given one as a gift, which may sound odd, but it was the best thing I could have been given....you would have thought me a few sandwiches short of a picnic if you'd seen me dancing round my deep freeze when I got it, yes, I'm a simple gal at heart. Anyway, if you can pick one up somewhere, do it...ebay, oztion, secondhand store, wherever. A good investment, methinks.

Bake from scratch - yet another frugal kitchen tip

When you're in the grocery store, a great way to save some $$ is to avoid the biscuit/cookie/cracker aisle. Apart from the fact that most of the products in there will have colours, flavours and preservatives on their ingredient list...and do you really want your kids/significant other/yourself eating that... it is also costing you money. And the packaging is doing nothing for the environment either. My suggestion - get baking.



It will save you some cash and hopefully do your health just a little bit of good too. Buy large bags of the basic ingredients - flour, white sugar, brown sugar, rolled oats, baking soda. Make your own baking powder as needed, buy large blocks of butter, stock up on things like chocolate chips when they're on sale. Buy generic brand items.

If you have a freezer, and most of us do, make a double portion of cookie dough and freeze half. I try to do my baking over a couple of days every few weeks. I'll make Anzac biscuits, choc chip cookies, maybe ginger bread cookies in various shapes, cheesy crackers and banana muffins.



Those are the staples in our house and they all freeze well post baking stage, and most of them pre-baking stage also.

It can take a while to get into the swing of baking your own snacks, but it's well worth the time and effort. I'll put up a few of my own basic recipes over the next week or so to give you somewhere to start.

Your budget, and your health will thank you for it!

Make your own baking powder - another frugal kitchen tip

Baking powder is an important ingredient in many cakes, cookies, and other baked products. Have you ever run out at that crucial moment? Well, did you know you can make your own baking powder? Apart from the rumor that commercial baking powder has some form of aluminium in it, being able to make your own means you have it on hand whenever you need it and, you know what's in it.


Baking Powder

2 teaspoons of cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda

Mix and use immediately.



If you want to store it, add a teaspoon of corn starch/cornflour and mix well. This absorbs moisture and stops it reacting before you need it to. (I have never tried storing it, but this is the advice I was given)

These ingredients are available in the supermarket by the baking products. Easy!

Run out of eggs? - a frugal kitchen tip

Just something while I think of it......

Have you ever started baking, then realised you have run out of eggs, and your recipe calls for at least a couple of them? Well I discovered, by being in this exact situation, that pureed fruit can actually be substituted for egg. I've done it a couple of times, once in muffins; I needed two eggs so instead put in about a two-egg-amount of pureed mixed fruits. And again recently in choc chip cookies; I was making a double batch and needed four eggs, whoops, should have checked first. I only had two, so put in an equal amount of pureed peaches. Can't tell the difference. Both mixtures held together well and there was no taste difference in the end result.

Keep this in mind if you're in the kitchen a lot, saves you having to do an emergency run to the store. It's saved me a few times!