Confident cooks and bakers know that once they have a good recipe under their belt, they can mess around with swapping ingredients around and ringing the changes.
This is true of my carrot cake recipe, which I adapt endlessly and present in new guises, for example in the delicious plum and poppy seed cake recipe.
And so it is with brownies. I’ve been making this recipe for 20 years, I have a feeling I took the original from BBC Good Food Magazine, but with the ratios in place (butter:chocolate:flour:sugar:eggs) I began adding riffs (peanut butter, cream cheese, cherries, raspberries, different nuts etc).
And this week I combined two recipes to make Rocky Road brownies. The base is all dark and brooding, 70% dark chocolate, and the additions are purely sweet-shop fun. The trick is to find a balance of salty sweetness and crunch. My initial goal was to use up the leftover Easter chocolate but (surprise, surprise) there wasn’t any so I had to improvise.
You can go with your favourites – broken digestive biscuits, mini Smarties, Maltesers, fudge, marshmallows, pretzels … add milk or white chocolate chips, the candy store is there for the taking!
This recipe fills a 20x20cm square brownie tin but I usually double up and bake in a lined, shallow roasting tray that is 36x25cm. If you can bear to, leave the baked brownie for at least an hour to cool, which will make cutting it easier.
Ingredients
185g unsalted butter
185g dark chocolate
85g plain flour
Pinch of sea salt
40g cocoa powder
200-300g of mixed flavourings (I used mini marshmallows, chocolate-coated pretzels, mini Smarties, and milk chocolate drops). Break up the bigger pieces, eg pretzels
3 large eggs
275g caster sugar
Method
Heat the oven to 170C
Melt the butter and chocolate together – I use a glass bowl in the microwave for this, 30 seconds on high power, stir and give it another 20 seconds. You can also do this in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Leave to cool.
In a large bowl use a hand mixer to whisk the eggs and sugar until just combined (you’re not looking to add lots of air).
Add chocolate and butter, and whisk again to combine.
Fold in the dry ingredients and add your flavourings. Give it a good stir and pour into your lined baking tray.
Bake @ 170C for 25 mins – the middle should still be fudgy. If you’ve doubled the recipe the cooking time should be 35 minutes.
Cool in tin.
© Linda Galloway 2021
