*** brownies, the eating kind ***

I've been off work for the last couple of days because I had a terrible allergic reaction to eyelash tinting- but that is a story for another day.  For the most part I was unable to do anything really, today though having better eyes, I baked some brownies, which are dee-licious.

The original recipe is from Jamie Oliver, "bloomin' brilliant brownies", but I adjusted the recipe slightly to my taste- for one I added less butter, and also half the sugar.  I find most dessert recipes I come across these days use borderline ridiculous amounts of sugar.

Here, the recipe:

200 g unsalted butter
200 g dark chocolate
50 g chopped pecan nuts
80 g cocoa powder
65 g flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
180g caster sugar
4 free-range eggs (keep them chickens happy!)

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees.
2.  Melt butter and chocolate in a large bowl over hot water, mix in the chopped nuts once melted.
3.  Mix together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and sugar.
4. Add dry ingredients to chocolate mixture and mix in the eggs.
5.  Pour your batter into a greased/lined baking tray.
6. Bake. I baked mine for 15 minutes, but I suppose ovens will vary.
7. Stuff your face with chocolatey goodness

I was a bit lazy to take process pictures (that, and my kitchen counter is quite ugly), but here two more pictures of the end result in our pretty garden.

*** endless bread ***

I'm very much in a bread-baking phase, I cannot stop making bread. In the last month or so I must have baked a minimum of 7 loaves of bread- that isn't a huge amount in quantity, but when you compare it to the usual zero loaves per month it seems like quite a lot. As we speak I have another loaf rising on the windowsill (baguette attempt no. 1)...

I uploaded a very spectacular image of a bread I baked a while ago on facebook and was meet with a shameful amount of scepticism from a very particular friend of mine (you know who you are..!), commenting "Lovely store bought produce placed on a baking tray to create the illusion of baking. You're a sly one".  To which I am cheesily retaliating with this post.

[500g white bread flour, 2 sachets yeast, milk, water, sugar and olive oil- and hey presto- you have bread]

*** fortune cookies ***

I have a vague recollection of myself in a chinese restaurant very many years back, looking at a fortune cookie and thinking "how do they get that piece of paper inside there?".  Now, finally, I looked up a recipe for fortune cookies and solved this baffling food mystery....

[For those of you wondering: the fortune is put in after baking round, flat, soft cookies- which are folded into fortune cookie shapes and left to cool- and harden.  Brilliant.]

They seemed to be a little bit too soft after initial baking, so I rebaked them at about 100 degrees for a couple of more minutes. Dried them right out, now they are as crispy and crunchy as can be. Superb.