Yummy Brownies

I’d never heard of brownies when I was a kid (or muffins for that matter). It was cakes and biscuits (of the cookie kind) for baked treats in our house. I’m not sure when I first heard of brownies, probably from American sitcoms, but I though they were too American (with that defensive “anti-Americanisation of Australia” tone). So I’ve always resisted cooking brownies (although partly from lack of experience). But hearing people talk about the rich, chocolate-y gooiness and my favourite food combination of nuts and chocolate, I couldn’t resist.

Turns out brownies are actually native to my front garden! This recipe is adapted from “exceptionally good brownies” in July 2011 edition of (Australian) Delicious magazine.

I usually measure out my ingredients as I cook. This time I got everything together while Little Man napped. I didn’t want to put the mixer since he’s been napping poorly lately, so out came the camera:

I then got a obsessed with the reflection of the ingredients in the bowl of my stand mixer:

Anyway, here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

150g (5oz) unsalted butter
200g chocolate (7oz) (I used milk chocolate), broken into pieces
4 eggs
1 1/3 cups (300g) caster sugar
2/3 cup (110g) plain flour
1 1/2 cups (150g) walnuts, roughly chopped

Procedure

1.  Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease a lamington pan (30cm x 19cm, 12” x 8”) (or similar) and line with baking paper. I used the wrapper from my block of butter to grease the pan.

2.  Melt the butter and chocolate together. I placed them in a bowl and microwaved on high for 15 seconds at a time, stirring between each burst. Set aside to cool to just above remove temperature.

3.  Using electric beaters or stand mixer, beat together the eggs and sugar until pale.

4.  Fold in the chocolate mixture, then the flour and finally fold in the walnuts.

5.  Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and bake in the oven for 23-35 minutes. To test if it’s ready, a skewer should come out with soft crumbs on it, rather than completely clean or gooey raw mixture.

6.  Cool in the pan, turn out and cut into squares.

A great treat to take over to a friend’s house! So my American readers, what are your best brownie-cooking tips?