Easter Chocolate Brownies

Believe it or not I'm not the biggest fan of chocolate and as most women will agree there is a certain time for all of us when Mother Nature rips off her crown, stamps her feet and demands that we give in to what SHE wants (what a villain she is!) However this time, there was definitely nobody holding me a gunpoint, demanding I shovel each and every last chocolately square into my mush, no siree. 

Some of you probably imagine me pottering around the kitchen, whisking away like Suzie Homemaker, a little caster sugar on my nose, scooping up just enough mixture with my little finger in a bid to decide whether it needs a little something extra. Well no ... from beginning to end my fat face was full of chocolate. At one point I couldn't tell where the chocolate started and my face began! If I wasn't chowing down on mini eggs (all of the pink ones) I was reaching into the drawer, the drawer directly in front of my chubby, little tum might I add, for a new spoon to scoop out some of the mixture. I cut off the edges and ate them when I was supposed to be waiting for the brownies to cool down. I was caught stuffing my hand into my bag on my train to work, trying to find the biggest square obviously. And then at work (it was bake off Thursday) I was so reluctant to put out my container that I waited until the last half an hour so everyone was stuffed after lunch knowing full well that meant I also got to indulge in the car on the way home. At no point was anyone holding a gun to my head, demanding for me to finish pretty much half a batch of brownies. 

The recipe is pretty similar to my Old Fashioned brownie recipe in the sense that they are very much grown up recipes, they go great with sophisticated ice creams and coffee's and as this recipe calls for self-raising flour they have the soft and fluffiness of a cake yet the typical brownie chew. The coffee used in this recipe is what makes it so grown up. I used a really flavorsome Parisien coffee by Nescafe and it really gave the brownies that mature, rich aftertaste I wanted. I also added a little orange blossom flavouring rather than vanilla. The Smarties mini-eggs served their purpose adding a fun, Easter theme to the brownies and inside the mixture they added a lovely sweet-smooth, chocolatey texture. 

This recipe is by Mary Berry with my own variations.

Ingredients 

300g plain/dark chocolate (39% cocoa solids)

225g butter

3 level tsp coffee

2 tsp hot water

3 large eggs

225g caster sugar

1tsp orange blossom or vanilla essence

75g self-raising flour

2 packets of mini eggs

Method

- Preheat your oven to 190 deg C/Fan 170 deg C/gas . Grease and line your baking tin with non-stick parchment.

- Break up the chocolate into pieces and melt slowly with the butter in a heat proof bowl over a pan of hot water, stirring occasionally. Leave to cool. 

- Dissolve coffee in hot water and in a separate bowl (to chocolate and butter mixture) mix coffee with eggs, sugar and flavouring. Gradually beat in the chocolate mixture, then fold in the flour.

- Pour the mixture into your tin and then carefully poke in your desired amount of mini eggs. 

- Bake for 40-45 minutes or until the brownies have a crusty top or until a skewer poked into the centre comes out clean.

- Leave the brownies to cool in the tin for around 10 minutes, then turn onto a wire cooling rack. Once cooled completely cut the brownies into squares.

- Store in an airtight tin.

Happy Easter - Moist Carrot Cake Recipe

Happy Easter everyone! Hope you've all had a fab one. I've been down in London so as you can imagine I've been indulging a fair bit of alcohol and not so much chocolate, naughty I know. Seen as how I wasn't in work on Friday I decided to get up early and bake up a mini-feast carrot cake being at the top of the list. I've made carrot cake in the past, in fact the first time I made it I used a Nigella recipe and it came out really nice. Thinking back this carrot cake was my first bake! How could I forget? It was this very cake that catapulted me into the baking-mad Beanie I am today. 

This recipe is perfect, what I love about it is how fruity and moist it is. I love that there is so much you can do with it. For example, adding extra ingredients such as currants and raisins, walnuts, mixed peel or orange zest.

I have made a traybake and layer cake version of this recipe and both turned out perfect I am so happy with the results, I was half expecting to pull it out of the oven and end up launching it down the end of the garden like I have done in the past. But not this time.

The base of this recipe is from Good Food and as always I have added my own little quirks. This recipe is not only great for holidays such as Easter I find it's perfect after dinner and also for afternoon tea, this recipe goes well with Rooibos Gingerbread Tea. I used my offcuts to make little carrot cake hearts with a medium heart-shaped cutter.

This recipe below will make an 18cm traybake, I have also made a layer cake using sandwich tins for this recipe I doubled up on the quantities and shared equally amongst the tins.

I have added two separate decorating methods one for a traybake and the other for a layer cake. For a simple yet effective form of decoration you can dust either versions of this cake with icing sugar and it'll look just as yummy!

Enjoy x

Ingredients

175g light muscovado sugar

175ml sunflower oil

3 large eggs

140g grated carrots 

Grated zest of 1 large orange

Grated Zest of 1/2 lemon

175g self-raising flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

Freshly ground nutmeg

50g Raisins (optional)

50g Mixed Peel (optional)

For the buttercream (layer cake)

275g Icing Sugar

150g butter

A little milk

1 tsp Orange Blossom flavouring

For the Icing (traybake)

175g icing sugar

2 tbsp lemon juice

 Method

 - Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4/fan 160C. Oil and line the base and sides of an 18cm square cake tin with baking parchment. In order for the parchment to fit perfectly I drew around the base of my tin and then cut out a little larger in order to make sure it fit inside my tin properly. I then snipped down each corner and stuck the over lapping flaps to the sides of my tin using the oil.

- Add the sugar into a large mixing bowl, pour in the oil and add the eggs. Lightly mix with a wooden spoon then stir in the grated carrots, add lemon, orange zest and raisins/mixed peel if using.

-  Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and spices, then sift into the bowl. Lightly mix all the ingredients. When everything is evenly amalgamated stop mixing. The mixture will be fairly soft and almost runny.

- Pour the mixture into the prepared tin/s and bake for 40- 45 minutes, until it feels firm and springy when you press it in the centre. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then turn it out, peel off the paper and cool on a wire rack. (You can freeze the cake at this point.)

Buttercream for layer cake

- Add the butter and beat until smooth. 

- Add in icing sugar a little at a time, until the mixture becomes a little stiff (if you need more icing sugar to get a nice stiff mixture keep adding.) the mixture should not be sloppy or runny.

- Pour in flavouring and mix together.

-  Place buttercream in the fridge for around an hour (if you are in a rush you can skip this step and move straight on to the next step.)

- Add milk a little at a time until the mixture is no longer stiff and resembles smooth ice cream. Remember not to add too much milk this will cause you buttercream to become sloppy and wet.

- Spoon the buttercream onto your cooled cakes and smooth out with a palette knife. Repeat until all cake layers are added. Then decorate with topping of your choice.

Icing for traybake

- Beat together the frosting ingredients in a small bowl until smooth – you want the icing about as runny as single cream. Set the cake on a serving plate and boldly drizzle the icing back and forth in diagonal lines over the top, letting it drip down the sides.

- Let icing set and cut into sqaures using a sharp knife.