Bare Cupboard Brownies

This recipe for brownies used to be my favourite, until I discovered my sinful brownies recipe (which I will share with you soon, I promise). Still, it has its merits, and the result is proper tasty. These are my chosen ‘brother bribes’ when he’s got a grump on. I baked about four batches of these last Christmas, and they promptly vanished! They were the first recipe for brownies that even sort of worked for me; for some reason brownies always seemed to explode in my oven… until I made peace with this recipe. Baking is alchemy. Sometimes alchemy goes awry. That anime they made? Actually a jazzed up version of my kitchen disasters. *Shudders* Those were some ugly brownie homunculi…

Anyway, back to the Bare Cupboard Brownies. I call them that because, quite simply, they are my go to recipe when I don’t have time or money to go out and splurge on a pound of 70% cocoa, fairtrade deliciousness, and all I have are the basics. There is nothing in this recipe that does not live in my baking cupboard or fridge anyway. This is the Spanish Omelette of the brownie world. They aren’t made with chocolate, which will make many bakers cringe, rather a healthy amount of unsweetened cocoa powder. Even so, you end up with fudgy, dense deliciousness at the end. Yum.


Ingredients:

140g Butter
250g Golden caster sugar
75g Unsweetened cocoa
Small pinch of salt (optional, or you can use salted butter)
1 tsp Vanilla extract (Don’t use essence, please. Think of your taste buds.)
2 Large free-range eggs
125g Plain flour
Optional: chocolate chips/chopped nuts/fudge pieces

Line a brownie pan, or, as I do, a 9 inch square cake tin with tin foil. Preheat your oven to no more than 160/ or 140 fan assisted.

Set a glass or steel bowl over a pan of simmering water. Combine the butter, cocoa, sugar and salt over the heat until the butter has melted and the mixture is glossy and even. Remove from heat.

Once cooled a little (don’t let the mixture go cold. The mixture needs to be pretty warm still, just not hot enough to curdle the eggs) beat in the eggs and vanilla.

Stir in the flour until the mixture is a uniform fudgy stickiness. At this stage add any optional extras and mix thoroughly.

Pour/spoon the mixture into the tin. The mixture is quite doughy so I usually even it out and push it into the corners with my fingers.

Bake for 22-25 minutes. The brownies are done when a skewer plunged into the middle comes out mostly clean. Set aside the cool. Once cool, chop up into the desired sized pieces.


These brownies, as with most I think, taste great when they are fresh, but freaking amazing if left to age overnight in an airtight container. They’re good for at least a week if kept cool and airtight. They are really very tasty, though despite much tweaking they will never be proper real chocolate brownies. They’re excellent iced (I’m such a heathen) or naked as the day they were baked.

Gosh I’m hungry.