Celia’s Chocolate Fudge Brownies

Thank you Celia once again!

Celia, the chocolate expert at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial has written a perfect post on the perfect brownie here.

I love making cakes in a saucepan, takes the stress out of it somehow :)

This is a fantastic and simple recipe from David Liebovitz’s Room for Dessert, beautifully explained by Celia with how to do it photos,  so get over there and say hi and download her pdf on how to do it.

I used Co-op Fair Trade dark chocolate which has less cacao in it than my regular dark chocolate, 48 % as opposed to my usual 70-80 % and it worked brilliantly.  Tips like that make all the difference sometimes. It’s worth buying chocolate as close as you can get to that specified if you want a similar result.

I used a mixture of nuts, brazils, walnuts and almonds as I had run out of hazelnuts which are to my mind the best nuts for this. I might make the all chocolate version next time! And there will definitely be a next time.

The top has that lovely cracked contrasting colour look that I associate with good brownies, the middle is moist without being liquid, not cakey, the best brownies I have made in a long while :)

Now to put on the kettle and have a cup of coffee and test them again…

Keep one for me!

Blueberry Muffins here too!

In the best (worst?) tradition of see something and want it now a post from Sally BR at the Bewitching Kitchen hit my inbox last night.  Some not so sublimal message went straight to my brain…..

Copycat muffins

‘Oh yes!’ , I thought, ‘Blueberry muffins, I want them and I want them now!’ –  (after a virtuous light supper of broadbeans and tomato passata on pasta).  Thank you Sally!  Sometimes reading my friends’ blogs is just what I need to prompt getting out the mixing bowl!

I went outside and inspected my very small blueberry plant, there were exactly 6 ripe blueberries on it.  Not quite enough for a batch of these, in fact, let’s be honest, I have never grown more than a  handful of these and the dogs have a habit of hoovering them off the plant anyway when they think I’m not looking.

As I have a mild phobia about translating cups to grams, I made them this way…

and I made them very fast.
250 grams plain flour
170 grams golden caster sugar
2 tsps baking powder

2 eggs
150 grams full fat yoghurt
grated fresh lemon zest
100 ml unsweetened soya milk
50 grams melted butter (as used full fat yoghurt reduced the butter- but you could use more like 100 grams if you are using low fat yoghurt I guess)

200 grams big fat blueberries

I sieved the dry ingredients together.

Beat the eggs, yoghurt, and soya milk together gently. Didn’t have buttermilk or much yoghurt left so added soya milk which seemed to work fine.

Added the lemon zest.

Melted the butter in another pan.

Then mixed the dry ingredients with the eggy/milk/yoghurt  mix, drizzled the cooling butter in on top, gave that a quick stir, till the butter was just mixed in,  folded the blueberries in. Plopped it into 11 muffin cases. I’ve realised that if you use one less muffin case, you get bigger muffins and  they look more convincing.
Baked them at 160 C on Fan setting for 25 minutes.

Eaten approx 15 minutes after they came out of the oven.

Watered the veg bed, admired the rainbow, went to bed.

Rainbow at bedtime