Chocolate Brownies

I wanted something simple to make this friday evening and so I settled on chocolate brownies from the Hummingbird bakery cookbook. I've never made brownies before but they are always a popular choice for me for dessert when I eat out... and so the time had come for me to attempt to make some of my own.

The recipe was relatively simple:

200g dark choc

175g unsalted butter

325g caster sugar

130g plain flour

3 eggs

a 33 x 23 x 5 cm baking tray lined with greaseproof paper

Preheat oven to 170C.

Put chocolate and butter in a heat proof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Leave until melted and smooth.

Remove from heat. Add the sugar and stir well until well incorporated.

Add the flour and stir until well incorporated (I had a taste at this stage and well, I could have eaten the whole bowl of mixture even before it went in the oven!!)

Finally stir in the eggs and mix until thick and smooth.

Pour the mixture into the prepared baking tray and bake in the preheated over for about 30-35 minutes or until flaky on the top but still soft in the centre. Be careful not to over cook otherwise the edges become hard and crunchy.

Leave to cool and dust with icing sugar.

I also added pecans to my recipe as I do like a few nuts dotted throughout. The texture of the brownies was perfect - really moist in the centre..just how a brownie should be! I have tried one this morning and I think they are actually better now they have cooled down!

I was going to pretty them up as the book suggests and dust with icing sugar...but they smelt so good when they came out the oven and I had just bought a tub of lovely Kelly's cornish clotted cream ice cream (yum) sooooo I just couldnt resist serving my brownies hot with lashings of ice cream.

What a lovely treat for a friday night...