Monday, May 07, 2007

Happy Birthday to Me!


Happy Birthday to me! To celebrate I had my friends over for an afternoon bbq, the sun was out, the rain stayed away (Not that we want the rain to stay away forever but it was nice just for the day!) & it was a beautiful afternoon. To fulfill everyone’s sweet tooth’s I made up this batch of brownies from Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess. They were very nice though my favourites are still the cherry brownies from Jamie Oliver’s latest book. Also they weren’t quite cooked after the specified 25 minutes & even after leaving them for a few extra minutes I think I still took them out too early as the recipe put the fear of God into me that they would turn out crumbly & horrible if left too long. This was definitely not a problem with the center being almost gooey rather than chewy although they did hold their form so maybe this was how they were supposed to turn out, who knows, I have just discovered brownie cooking & am no expert as yet, will have to keep experimenting.

Brownies

375g soft unsalted butter
375g dark chocolate
6 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
500g caster sugar
225g plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
300g chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 180. Line a 33 x 23 x 5.5cm tin with baking paper. Melt the butter and chocolate together in a large heavy based pan. In a bowl or jug, beat the eggs with the sugar & vanilla. Measure the flour into another bowl & add the salt.

When the chocolate mixture has melted, let it cool a bit before beating in the eggs & sugar, and then the nuts & flour. Neat to combine smoothly then scrape out of the pan & into the lined tin.

Bake for about 25 minutes. When it’s ready, the top should be dried to a paler brown speckle, but the middle still dark & dense & gooey. And even with such a big batch you do need to keep alert, keep checking: the difference between gungy brownies & dry brownies is only a few minutes, remember they will continue to cook as they cool. Makes a maximum of 48.

4 comments:

Anh said...

Happy Birthday Ange! :)

Brilynn said...

Happy Birthday!
I've looked at this recipe a bunch of times but have never made it because I'm wary of NIgella recipes, but they look really good in the picture.

Serenity Later said...

happy birthday ange!

those are some very yummy looking brownies. whenever i make them i wind up baking them too long and end up with crumbly brownies that fall apart. even if they taste alright, clearly those are not brownies...maybe crumblies?

Mikey said...

Just wanted to wish you a belated Happy Birthday!