Mermaid Kitchen: Brownies

Hello everyone! Welcome to one of my new shiny regular segments: Mermaid Kitchen. I love to bake, always have. Admittedly, I do it with varying degrees of success, especially in my old kitchen with bad counter heights and an oven which only cooked on one side! But since living with my partner, I have a nice big counter to prepare on and a decent oven so my baking mojo is alive and well.

As part of my 2019 goals, I want to make more. Make more food from scratch. Make more crafty things. Make more beauty products. This is all part of my way of trying to reduce my plastic impact on the environment. So I thought it'd be prudent to share incase it inspires anything for you guys or (better yet) you have any tips for me to improve what I'm doing, or any ideas you'd like me to guinea pig for you. Changes are easier when you do it together.

One of the reasons why I want to bake more is, well, because I like cake. I like to have something sweet in my lunchbox, pudding is a must; there was always something sweet on my shopping list. But this generates plastic I cannot recycle or waste responsibly. A lot of lunchbox treats were individually wrapped which just furthers the problem. So making my own drastically reduces my plastic waste (until Silver Spoon up their range, I will have to keep using Billington sugars) and, let's face it, homemade tastes better all the way.

And it gives me the opportunity to make healthier options. She says, on a brownie recipe post... 

They won't all be cake. I make a mean pasta sauce, I want to brave curry at some point, and I am no stranger to having a go and royally messing up! Should be an adventure.

Chocolate Brownies

End goals

Ingredients:

• 125g (4.5oz) dark chocolate
• 150g (5oz) butter
• 4 eggs
• 500g (1lb 2oz) caster sugar
• 175g (6oz) plain flour
• 1 tsp basking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• Additional: 100g white chocolate

 

All ready to go.

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C (GM4) and line two sandwich tins with either butter or baking sheets.
2. Measure the butter into a saucepan and grate the chocolate into the same pan. (I grated the first time I made this. It. Makes. A. Mess. I just broke it up this time.)
3. Melt together over a low heat until combined.
4. Whisk the eggs and sugar together, until pale, and then stir in the chocolate-butter mix.
5. Sift in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Fold in the dry ingredients.
6. Pour into the lined tins. At this point, I added white chocolate chunks and smushed them in as I smoothed the mix to the corners.
7. Bake for 30 minutes. A crust should form on the top but still be gooey on the inside.
8. Leave to cool in the tins. Then cut according to your wants and needs.

Melting the butter and chocolate.

Pouring the chocolate mix in.

Anything go wrong?

Usually the answer to this is everything. But this time, I think I can call it a success. I'm not the best at folding in flour, so there were a couple pockets I was stirring in while smoothing the mix in the tin. And they have collapsed again. Are brownies supposed to collapse?

Maybe stopping mid-fold to take a pic was where I went wrong!

 

How can I vary it next time?

I have actually made these brownies before. I put honeycomb I'd made using this recipe into the mix. It just melted in and made it extra sweet, which was tasty but not the crunchy bite I was expecting! This time I added white chocolate because I think brownies are bit boring without something extra in them. 

It's not the healthiest cake and I guess the way to make it better for me is substitute the sugar for something. Or, you know, not make brownies. But sometimes I need brownies, damnit! Can you add fruit to brownies? Or is that just weird?

Honestly, I just wanted to try out my new tins.

What's your favourite brownie recipe?

Does your recipe answer any of my questions? Do you have one that's better and gooey-ier than mine? Do you know of any sugar brands which have range and paper packaging? (Honestly, that's my biggest problem. Silver Spoon clearly cater for tea and not cake.) Any suggestions for what I try next?

Excuse me while I omnomnom.

Recipe from Tea & Cake by Lisa Faulkner

Music: Discover Weekly Playlist (Spotify)