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...)

Make your own bubble mixture

My boys came home from a party on the weekend each with a small container of bubble mixture in their party bag. Yay, an outside activity we can do in our miniscule backyard!

Now, kids being what they are, in their enthusiasm to blow the perfect bubble the mixture soon got accidentally tipped out. So rather than cut the activity short and bring them back inside where they would run sugared up havoc in our small house, I made up some more bubble mix and decanted it into their jars.

Several times.

This is the recipe I used:

Bubble Solution

• 2 cups warm water
• 1 cup liquid dishwashing soap
• 1/4 cup glycerin

Mix all ingredients together and store in a plastic bottle or glass jar with fitting lid.

It works a treat and can be made up in advance and kept till needed, and is cheaper than buying small containers of the stuff. I found glycerin in the supermarket, by the medical supplies I think and I imagine you could also find it in a chemist store.

This is also a great activity to keep the kids occupied for........as long as they remember to hold their jar upright.

Ok.

Ooh, might be good for a gift too, pour into a decent sized jar, make a label or tie a ribbon round it.

A multi-purpose recipe, the best kind :-)

$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!

What to do with all those old crayons

If you have kids, chances are you have a box of stubby, broken crayon ends somewhere in the house.

Well, drag them out and get busy melting them into something new.
A fun activity for the kids, and if you can dig up some silicone type molds, the end result will be some funky looking new crayons in a whatever shape you....I mean the kids.....desire.

A nice how-to on that can be found at Crafting A Green World.

Or you could make layered ones like these....

Find out how these were made on ChicAndJo, a little bit more fiddly than the first ones, but a great looking result.

Either of these would make a great thrifty Christmas gift or stocking stuffer for a young child.
I need to start collecting our crayon ends, instead of letting my 15 month old eat them.

Yes, bad mummy, apparently crayons have petroleum in them so no more blue teeth for him....

My sis just tried these and informed me that her colours separated. Or rather, the colour separated from the wax, leaving the top of the crayon (or was it the bottom?) white and the the other half very intensely coloured.

Mmmm, I wonder why?

Make your own chocolate syrup

Yes, I went to the baby market and had a great time fossicking. Found some good bits and pieces too, I'll give you a run down tomorrow as long as I don't come down with swine flu from the experience, which my sis reminded me is rampant in Victoria. Come to think of it, the market was much less hectic and busy than usual, I wonder if that's why.

In the meantime, try this one out if you're a chocoholic. This chocolate syrup recipe works well for making chocolate milk, hot chocolate, for over icecream and I'm sure there are other uses as well.

Such as.....

Make a chocolate cake and leave it in the pan.
While still hot, take a skewer or toothpick and poke deep holes all over the surface.
Pour over chocolate syrup and leave it to soak in.
Eat, maybe with some vanilla icecream.


Gah, I'm drooling now, I haven't tried this but will sometime very soon. It will make a decadent dessert on a freezy cold Melbourne day.

Making this chocolate syrup is cheaper in the long run than buying it and of course, there is the benefit of knowing exactly what is in it.

Before I give you the recipe I just HAD to include this chokky pic. Someone's been enjoying themselves a little too much, but it wasn't me, boo!



If you want to see more, check out A dream in chocolate...

Chocolate Syrup

1/2 cup Cocoa Powder
1 cup Sugar
1 cup water
1 teaspoon Vanilla

• Combine cocoa, sugar, and water. Bring to a boil.

• Allow it to boil for one minute.

• Remove from heat, cool and add vanilla.

• Store in the fridge.

Mmmm, I see a chocolate cake in my very near future...