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The Best Dark Chocolate Brownies

August 2013

Ingredients

100g butter
175g dark brown sugar
125g dark chocolate
2 tablespoons golden syrup
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
150g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 tablespoons cocoa powder

Method

  1. Line and grease an 8 inch cake tin and preheat oven to 160 degrees celsius.
  2. Gently melt the chocolate, butter, dark chocolate and syrup in a pan stirring continuously until all the ingredients are melted and combined. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.
  3. Beat the eggs and add the vanilla essence. Whisk in the cooled chocolate and butter mixture.
  4. Sieve in the dry ingredients and fold them in gently with a large metal spoon.
  5. Pour the batter into your tin and bake for around 60 minutes. Remember, an overcooked brownie is a disappointing brownie so make sure to remove it from the oven when it is still slightly liquid in the centre (it will solidify slightly as it cools). Cut into squares when cool and attempt not to eat the whole lot in one sitting.

 

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Meg’s Spiced Raspberry and Apple crumble

August 2013

This is a delicious recipe from one of my friends from university.  Crumbles are a great way to use up fruits that are a little too squishy or bruised to be eaten whole. Try experimenting with different fruit combinations but make sure you adjust the sugar content accordingly and beware an excess of juicy berries that will make your topping soggy.

Ingredients

For the fruit layer:

1kg apples, peeled, cored, and sliced into small chunks
175g raspberries
75g caster sugar

Half a teaspoon of nutmeg
Half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon

For the topping:

150g flour
75g caster
sugar 75g
butter
1 teaspoon of mixed spice

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius
  2. Layer the fruit in a well-greased ovenproof dish sprinkling a little of the sugar between each layer. When all the fruit is arranged, sprinkle over the spices.
  3. For the topping, sift the flour and sugar into a bowl, and rub in the butter until the mix looks like fine breadcrumbs. Add your spices and mix thoroughly.
  4. Spoon the topping evenly over the fruit, then bake for 40 minutes
  5. Serve with ice cream, cream or just by itself. 

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The Pudding Bar

The easiest way of catering pudding for a large group that brings out the creative side in everybody.

The secret to the success of the pudding bar is keeping in mind texture and the balance of sweetness in the potential desserts your guests could make. Below are some examples of what people came up with:

We all remember the unbridled joy of unlimited ice cream sundaes at chain restaurants: a tiny china bowl and your choice of sprinkles and sauces. Well, I thought, why not scale up the concept? Instead of the stress of cooking 3 or 4 different desserts (with guests’ dietary requirements and foibles in mind of course) why not just make the components? And thus the idea for the pudding bar was formed.

So I thought, what makes up my favourite puddings? In my opinion, the best puddings contain 3 elements: something sweet, something creamy and something fresh. For my sweet selection I made brownies, meringues and shortbread biscuits.  My creamy constituents included cream (pouring and whipped), yoghurt and ice cream (chocolate and vanilla). For freshness I provided summer berries from the garden, blackcurrant coulis with cassis, chopped nuts and a bitter chocolate sauce.

Me and my selection from the Pudding Bar :brownie, berries, vanilla ice cream and nuts in case you were interested. 

This was the easiest pudding-making for 18 people has ever been and I got some of the most glowing compliments I have ever received. So for your next party, why not get people to assemble their own favourite pudding and take some of the pressure off so you can enjoy yours more too?