squidgy brownies

I tend to bake a lot with fruit, mostly because I love the flavour of fruity bakes and like to pretend it's part of my five-a-day, but every so often I have the urge to bake something unashamedly sweet and down right unhealthy. Enter the brownie.

These are quite possibly the squidgiest, fudgiest brownies I have ever made. They almost had to be peeled off the baking parchment. However they still had that all important crisp, flaky brownie surface. I also chucked some extra chunks of milk chocolate to the batter so there would be little pockets of gooey chocolate with each bite.

For a change I photographed these at the picnic bench in the garden as it was so warm and sunny. Yeah, sunshine happens occasionally, and what's better than enjoying a brownie with a cuppa in the sunshine?

The recipe is ever so slightly adapted from one I bookmarked on Nelly's Cupcakes last year, originally a Nigella Lawson recipe.

Just a reminder to everybody that google reader is shutting down in the next couple of weeks so you'll either need to bookmark your favourite blogs or swap to a new blog reading platform such as Bloglovin', Feedly or Hello Cotton. Personally I use Bloglovin' and I find it easy enough to navigate. My Bloglovin' button can be found on my sidebar if you want to click and follow :)

Here's what I did:

200g unsalted butter

180g Cadburys Bourneville chocolate
20g milk chocolate (40% cocoa solids)

2 duck eggs

260g golden caster sugar

115g plain flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

75g milk chocolate, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4 and line a 20 x 30cm baking tray. Melt together the butter and chocolate, either in short bursts in the microwave or in a glass bowl over a small pan of simmering water. Set aside to cool. Meanwhile whisk together the eggs and sugar, then add the cooled butter/chocolate mixture. Add sifted flour, salt, vanilla extract and chunks of milk chocolate and mix everything together. Spread the mixture onto the prepared tray (I also had enough to fill 4 cupcake cases) and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until the surface is lighter in colour and slightly cracking. Leave to cool completely in the tray (if you can resist!) before cutting into slices.