Nigella Lawson's Brownies

As promised, order is restored after the first savoury post, with another lovely baking recipe! And you can't get much more sweet and decadent than a chocolate brownie! Definitely makes up for eating vegetables. Even if they were pureed in soup with bacon! Its a tough life, haha. 

Considering I don’t really eat chocolate, I have made a surprising amount of chocolate things this year. I guess when your baking for other people, chocolate is hard to go past. 

After making the brownies by Bill Granger back in March, I was interested to see what another recipe would turn out like. I of course, could not go past a Nigella Lawson recipe. 

When I first made these I think I cooked them a little longer than Nigella stipulated. The brownies were more cake-y, than fudgy, however it was commented that they tasted exactly like Sara Lee chocolate cake, which was considered a good thing!

Ingredients: 

150g unsalted butter 

300g light muscovado sugar

75g cocoa powder

150g plain flour

1 tsp bicarb soda

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

150g milk chocolate, roughly chopped into chunks 

Method: 

Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celsius. Line a baking tin/tray measuring approx. 25cm/5cm.  

Melt butter over a low heat in a medium saucepan. Once melted, add sugar and stir to combine. 

Sift the cocoa powder, flour and bicarb and stir into the pan. Once it is mixed in, remove from heat. The mixture will be quite dry at this point. 

In a jug, whisk the eggs with the vanilla extract and then add to the brownie mixture. 

Stir in the chopped chocolate and immediately pour mixture into prepared pan. Cook for 20-25 minutes. The idea is to have the brownies still a bit wobbly when they come out of the oven, and a skewer inserted into the centre of the brownies would not come out clean. 

Place the tin on a cooling rack, and allow to cool a little before cutting the brownies. 

Original Recipe from ‘Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home’ by Nigella Lawson, p.217 (2010). 

Originally Posted May 19, 2014.

Bill Granger's 'Mad' Chocolate Brownies

In the past year I have purchased or been given almost all of Bill Granger’s cookbooks. I know he’s been around for a while, and I’m late to catch on, but ALL his recipes are good and work. It’s amazing. My Mum has had a copy of his ‘Feed Me Now’ book for a while, and for some reason I always ignored it. I had no idea what I was missing out on. I was steered in the right direction, in an odd and rather sad way by my Grandma. 

When she died we had to go through some of her things. In the sitting room, there was a lounge chair with a bookcase next to it. The bookcase was like a picture back in time. It had been left untouched since she had last used it almost a year previously. Even a couple of Christmas related magazines were on it, left from the last Christmas she spent at home. It was quite eery going through her things. I kept feeling like she was going to walk through the door and tell us to put her stuff away because she was still using it. On her bookshelf, were novels she had been reading and a small collection of books she had used or won at school in the 1940s. There was also a copy of Bill Granger’s book ‘Everyday’. On the inside cover was a message from one of my Grandma’s friends who had given it to her for Christmas a few years earlier. There were some pages marked, and the dust cover was slightly faded like it had been sitting in the sun for a while. 

I kept the book and when I looked through it, I noticed how many recipes looked good, and that I wanted to try. I have made Bill’s Portuguese Tarts many times and tried the Lamingtons for Australia Day this year. Every recipe works so well. And tastes so good! Even though they way I came across this book was sad, it was nice to know that even after death my Grandma could still influence the way I cook. It’s also comforting to have nice reminders of her, especially in the kitchen. I now have many more of Bill’s titles, all of which are great. So great, I don’t know how I coped in the kitchen without them. For Christmas a friend gave me ‘Bill’s Basics’, which is where this recipe comes from. Bill doesn’t call them ‘Mad’ chocolate brownies. This is my addition because when I made them for my brothers birthday and took them interstate to visit him, that was the word he used to describe them. 

The original recipe says to use all dark chocolate. I have used half dark chocolate and half milk chocolate because I dislike that bitter taste dark chocolate can have. I don’t think it would matter what proportions of which chocolate you use, the brownies will still be great!

Ingredients: 

350g caster sugar

80g cocoa powder

60g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder 

4 eggs, lightly beaten

200g melted unsalted butter

2 tsp vanilla extract

100g dark chocolate

100g milk chocolate

Method:

Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius and line a square 22cm baking tin. Chop chocolate roughly and set aside. 

In a large bowl, stir the sugar, cocoa, flour and baking powder together. Add the eggs, melted butter and vanilla and mix until combined. Then mix in the chopped chocolate. 

Pour batter into the prepared tin and bake for 40-50 minutes. 

Cool slightly in the tin before turning on to a wire rack. Cut into squares or small cubes. 

Yield of this recipe will depend on how you cut the brownie slab up. However, it should give at least 12 portions when cutting the brownie into squares. 

Original recipe from 'Bill's Basics' by Bill Granger (2010, HarperCollins), p. 42.

Originally Posted March 30, 2014.