Tag: brownie recipe

What to do with all those Easter Eggs – Easter Egg Brownie Bites

So the bunny has been, the long weekend has ended and I still have easter eggs left on my kitchen table. I think there might be something wrong with me. I did get sick over easter, so perhaps the sickness entered my brain and altered my chocolate lobe? Are there any doctors out there that can recommend treatment? Particularly as I feel like I cannot scavenge for half price eggs this year as they might just end up going to waste. Although if YOU, my lovely reader, have been able to scrounge some super cheap eggs or have any left over and are wondering what to do with them, read on. I have some suggestions. Either way, here is the story of my easter and the terrible affliction that I seem to have been left with.

It started with a strange anomaly with the bourke st bakery flourless chocolate cake.

I only had one piece. Yes, you read that right. One.

No matter, no worries, all things must pass. Right?

Wrong.

Out of all these easter goodies from my beautiful students, I just didn’t feel like eating much.

Even my favourite Lindt bunnies seemed to have lost their jingly allure.

so I put these cute bunnies on top of some cupcakes to take to the S family for easter.

Didn’t actually eat any. Despite them being super cute.

I rallied a little with some delicious easter afternoon tea at the Observatory Hotel

Which was, as always, fantastic.

Brilliant service, lovely food, a vast array of tea and great ambiance, I cannot recommend them highly enough.

I also gave myself an easter mani with Bloom ‘Corfu’ and OPI ‘Teenage Dream’. I thought it made them reminiscent of the shimmery easter egg foil and might induce some chocolate appetite.

But I still had many eggs left over. So I decided that I had to get baking and sort myself out.

Which led me to these Easter Egg Brownie Bites. Perhaps one of the easiest recipes ever.

And it’s therapeutic! Sorry Mr Bunny, but you had to go.

After all, perhaps all I needed to do to appease the chocolate gods and restore me to health was a sacrifice?

It is a one bowl recipe and doesn’t even require a mixer of any sort! Easy!

Hide your eggs in the brownie batter (and relieve your lovely weekend memories of easter eggs hunts!)

then bake, bake, bake, my pretties!

Just 12 minutes is all it takes

And then enjoy the warm, gooey, melty centre.

Good lord, these are tasty and last for days as all they need to restore gooey-ness is to be nuked for 30 seconds in the microwave. And, even better, they used up two packets of small easter eggs and make great gifts for morning/afternoon teas.

So, my lovelies, now that I have helped you with your easter egg excess, are you able to help me with my predicament? Do I just need to bite the bullet and eat all the chocolate in order to re-store my factory settings? This blog has documented my love of chocolate over the last two years and I refuse to believe that this is a permanent state of nonchalance re: chocolate. Send me your solutions!

Easter Egg Brownie Bites – Adapted from this recipe from taste.com

Ingredients

150g unsalted butter

100g dark choc easter eggs

100g Lindt milk chocolate easter bunny, chopped.

1 packet mars bar easter eggs

1 packet malteser easter eggs

1/2 cup caster sugar

1 cup plain flour

2 eggs, lightly beaten

Method

1. lightly grease your mini muffin pan (1 1/2 tbsp capacity) and heat your oven to 160 degrees celsius (fan forced)

2. place butter, dark chocolate eggs and chopped up bunny into a microwave safe bowl and nuke them all on 50% power for 2 mins. Make sure that you pause every 30 seconds to stir your chocolate around, you don’t want to burn it!

3. Stir in sugar and leave to cool slightly

4. mix in the flour then eggs making sure that you incorporate each ingredient properly

5. spoon the mix into your muffin pan. As there is no rising agent in this mix you can safely fill them almost to the top of the hole, just remember that some of the batter will be displaced by the egg when you insert it

6. unwrap your easter eggs and push them into the centre of each hole making sure to cover the top of the egg with batter

7. bake for 12 mins

8. eat while still warm!

Note: these will store for a few days if left in an airtight container. If you want to heat them up again (which I highly recommend) you just need to pop them under the grill for a few mins or put them in the microwave for 30 seconds

Jamie Oliver’s Bloomin’ Brilliant Brownies

So my resolution to cook more things without chocolate was short lived. Inspired by this thread I thought that the best way to celebrate the end of my (brief) Chocolate Drought was with dense, fudgey brownies. Yummo! I hear you say, and right you are. The title is no overstatement, these babies are BRILLIANT! Just the thing for a chilly Winter’s day.

Be warned, there is a lot of butter in this recipe. But if my scale says ‘0’ then… it cant be that much can it?

True to form, I doubled slightly upped the chocolate dose

Then licked the bowl. Did you expect any less?

I added 5 mins to the cooking time because I used a smaller tin so I was very worried when I took my brownies out and they were quite firm. The last few batches of brownies I had cooked were too dry and I thought I had overcooked these too

Then the top sank and I knew I was in the clear!

mmmmmmmm fudgey…

Now I felt a bit like Nigella when I was eating these. They were so gooey and fudgey that I wanted to roll around on the floor in ecstacy. I always thought her moaning was a little over the top, but if she enjoys eating all her food as much as I enjoyed eating these, I absolutely understand!

The recipe I used was Jamie Oliver’s Bloomin’ Brilliant Brownies found HERE

I did change the nuts and cherries for milk and white chocolate chips and used a 20cm tin because I was lacking a larger tin but they were the only changes I made.

So, my lovelies, what is your favourite chocolate recipe?

New Job Brownies

Now I just need to put a little disclaimer in here. I use the word “brownies” very loosely here because, well they aren’t brownies (strictly speaking). Two things led me to bake this treat.

Number One: I was intrigued by this post by Bakerella about the strangely named Congo Bars. Basically, they’re what we call Blondies, Brownies with white chocolate instead of cocoa. Yummo! Particularly apt because at that moment my pantry was absolutely full of cooking chocolate of the white, dark AND milk variety. They needed to be eaten.

Number Two: I got a new job! Yay! Now, most of you will have heard me bemoaning my chronic state of unemployment over the past six months. In a bit of an up and down week last week, I had two interviews and, finally, success! Of course, new jobness must be celebrated with the consumption of sweet, chocolatey mouthfuls of amazing. Yes, amazing is now a noun.

So I tried the Bakerella Congo Bars. Im not sure if I converted the measurements wrong, or missed an ingredient or what, but something went pretty wrong with these. They were too dry and just didn’t cut it. So I searched and I searched and I found what I was pretty sure would be a good Blondie recipe. Thankyou, Hummingbird Bakery for sharing your delicious recipes with us mere mortals! I just upped the chocolate quota in this recipe and swapped the nuts for chocolate (like you didn’t see that coming!) and voila! Amazing Blondies, truly worthy for such a celebration. Enjoy!

I subscribe to the belief that the batter is just the stuff that holds all the chocolate together. Yes I do.

mmmmm studded with squares of milk and dark chocolate…

Hooray for employment! These Blondies are excited too!

No such thing as a small piece. Particularly with this triple chocolate fudgey goodness!

Blondies – Adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook

Ingredients

150g White chocolate

125g Unsalted butter

150g Caster Sugar

2 Eggs

1 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract

200g Plain Flour

1 pkt Milk Choc Chips (I cant remember how big the packet was, just use however much you want!)

1 pkt Dark Choc Chips (As above)

6 Squares of Milk Cooking Chocolate (These are really optional, I just liked having a big square of chocolate to bit into at the center of each blondie!)

6 Squares of Dark Cooking Chocolate (As above)

Method

1. Put the white chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Leave until melted and smooth. (These are the instructions given by Hummingbird, I melted the butter in the microwave and melted the white chocolate in the butter and it turned out alright. Much less hassle than a double boiler too)

2. Add the sugar and stir until well incorporated

3. Add the eggs and vanilla extract, stirring vigorously so that the eggs don’t cook

4. Add the flour

5. Mix in the choc chips

6.  Spread mixture into a baking tray and place the chocolate squares in the batter

7. Bake at 170 degrees celsius for 35-40 mins or until golden brown on top. DO NOT OVERCOOK!

8. Try not to pass out when you bit into all those amazing pieces of chocolate.