Tuesday 22 May 2012

Bang-on birthday brownies

We generally split the cooking in our house but my wife is definitely the baker. She made me a delicious carrot cake for my birthday a couple of years ago, so I thought I should try to return the favour for her birthday, last weekend.

Not being an experienced baker, I went for something simple. Simple but yummy! The answer was in Sainsburys Magazine, with a great Oreo brownie recipe by Lorraine Pascale.

Great for a starter like me, the recipe is really easy. Basically, you melt 175g butter (Kerrygold recommended) over the stove and then stir in 200g of chopped up dark chocolate (I used Tesco Finest Swiss 72% dark). Whilst the chocolate is melting in to the butter, whip up the eggs (3 full plus 2 yolks and some vanilla essence) until fluffy. Mix in the sugar (175g soft light brown) and buttery chocolate, adding it round the edge and folding in to keep the fluffiness.
Next, mix in 2tbsp plain flour, 2tbsp cocoa powder and 1/3 packet broken Oreo cookies before pouring into a greased and lined tin. Finally, press in the remaining Oreo cookies. (If in doubt, err towards a 50:50 split of the cookies for this bit, as I found myself running out of room on top.)

All that's left now is to bake on the middle shelf at 180°C for 20-25 min. It was here that things went a little bit wrong for me. The numbers have rubbed off our oven temperature dial, so it was probably nearer 200°C and after 20 min it was beginning to catch a bit around the edges and particularly the corners. Fortunately, once it had cooled, cutting it open revealed that it was not over-cooked on the inside. In fact, it was really light and fluffy... and delicious!

Of course, it's hard to imagine mixing butter, sugar and chocolate and it not being delicious but I think that this is a particularly good outcome for this combination. The Oreos add a slightly salty, crunchy finish to the sweet, chocolately brownie and look pretty too, particularly where the white cream filling shows.

The only sad thing is that we just ate the last two pieces.

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