Chocolate Brownies

A few weeks ago now, when I still had the baking bug, I whipped together a batch of chocolate brownie cupcakes!  I used a recipe I found on the BBC Good Food website that I’ve listed below for you to refer to.  I made some changes when following the recipe, which I found to work pretty well – but you guys might feel better following the pros.  Either way, let me know how you get on below, mine turned out pretty good!

·         185g unsalted butter

·         185g best dark chocolate

·         85g plain flour

·         40g cocoa powder

·         50g white chocolate

·         50g milk chocolate

·         3 large egg

·         275g golden caster sugar

First, I preheated the oven to 180C.  I then mashed up the butter into randomly cut blocks in a large bowl and chucked in the dark chocolate that I had broken up into squares.  I then put the bowl into the microwave for around 3 three minutes – taking it out every thirty seconds to check and stir.  Once full melted, I put it to the side and left it to cool.

Next, I weighed out the flour and cocoa powder and put the two into a medium sized bowl.  The online recipe said to sieve the two before mixing them together, but when my mum pointed out that she never sieves anything (and her baking is amazing) – I decided to skip this step.  I’d probably just make a mess anyways.

The next step was to break up the chocolate bars – which I found to be a hell of a lot easier than what the online method made out to be.  I pretty much just broke the bars up into the squares, and then broke the squares up further into random chunks and mixed it all together.  This resulted in a lot of random sized chunks, which I wasn’t super fussy about because let’s be honest – who doesn’t like big chunks of chocolate in their brownies?

This next part was messy, thankfully though my mum has an electric hand mixer and so it didn’t take nearly as long as I had anticipated.  I cracked the eggs into another large bowl, and tipped the caster sugar in with it.  I then used the mixer on the highest speed for around about three minutes, until it turned to a nice thick and creamy mixture.  This probably doubled in size and the colour became a lot paler – like the online method stated. 

It was then time to pour the chocolate and butter mix in with the egg and caster sugar, which didn’t take very long at all.  I used a wooden spoon to mix it all together, and added in the flour and cocoa powder to the mix.  I added this in little by little, folding it through so that the mixture came to a thick and sticky consistency.  When this was ready, I then chucked in the bowl of chocolate chunks and gave it another stir.

The brownie mix was then ready to pop into the oven – and so I poured a little bit of the mixture into each cupcake case, leaving enough room for them to raise a little.  Around about 25 cases later, the brownie cupcakes were ready to pop into the oven and to be left for 20-30 minutes until they became nice and spongey.  When ready, take them out of the oven and leave for about 10 minutes until cool!  And voila – you’ve got some super tasty brownie cupcakes ready to be munched on!

Does anyone else make their brownies into cupcakes?

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1223/bestever-brownies - in case you prefer to follow the pros.

Until the next one,

Lauren x

Chocolate Chip Cookies

So on Wednesday, I was feeling a little creative and decided that I was going to put my baking hat on and go a little nuts.  I’m not a baker, and so by nuts, I mean I whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies.  I followed a recipe on the BBC Good Food website listed below, only I doubled the recipe.  I wanted to make big, chunky cookies, and so doubling the recipe meant that I would still get the same amount of cookies as the standard batch, just bigger!

You will need:

300g salted butter (soften before use for an easier mix)

160g brown sugar

160g granulated or caster sugar

Vanilla extract (to your preference)

2 large eggs

450g plain flour

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2tsp salt

400g chocolate chips

The above ingredients are for the double batch that I made, for a standard batch, simply half the amount per item.

To start, you should preheat the oven to 190C/170C fan/gas 5.  After this, I then lined four (that’s right, I had four trays of cookies) with a non-stick greased baking paper to stop them from sticking to the trays. 

Next, you mix the butter and sugars into a bowl, and beat them until thick and creamy.  Once this was done, I then added in the vanilla (which I’m not going to lie, I added about half a 90ml bottle to the mixture), and slowly poured in the whisked eggs.  The toughest part was sieving in the flour, bicarbonate of soda and the salt to the mixture and mixing it all together until it came to the cookie dough.  The mixture was so tough that I actually managed to snap a wooden spoon, how many of you can say you’ve done that whilst making cookies?!  

RIP

Finally, you add in the chocolate chips and stir them in so that they are mixed all the way through.  I used two bags of milk chocolate chips on Wednesday when I made them, and today used three bags, one milk, one white and one dark.  I will be following today’s footsteps forever more, just so you are all aware.

Finally, you’re ready to scoop them out onto your trays and pop them in the oven.  I placed large round blobs of the mixer on the trays, I managed approx. 7 cookies per tray.  Because they were larger, the cookies did take a lot longer to cook (today about 20-25 minutes) – but it is totally worth the extra time!

Once cooked, leave them for about 5-10 minutes and tada!  You’ve got yourself a tasty, and very calorific snack… enjoy!

Please note, that this recipe was sourced from BBC Good Food, I simply altered the recipe to my own preference :)

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2459643/vintage-chocolate-chip-cookies

What’s your favourite dessert to bake?

Until the next one,

Lauren x