Random Recipe #2: Brownies

Dom's blog challenges are fun! This month's Random Recipe challenge was to pick out our 18th cookbook and make something randomly from there.

Luckily for me, I organize my cookbooks according to cuisine/course etc.. So my first forty or so are just desserts or baking cookbooks. My 18th cookbook happened to be this lovely little one called "101 Chocolate Treats" by BBC Books/Good Food magazine. I love the 101 series by BBC Books/Good Food.. The books are very cute and tiny and the recipes are extremely simple. Plus, there are pictures for every recipe! Which I love. Anyways, my random recipe turned out to be brownies.

After that I started flipping through the cookbook and came across a recipe which used brownies. It was a trifle with layers of brownies, strawberries, and mascarpone and cream. I wanted to use some of the brownies and make the trifle... but alas, academic responsibilities prevented me from doing so... (you can sense some of that academic feel through my pictures....)

The recipe is fairly simple- I adapted it slightly from the original:

Ingredients

190g dark chocolate, chopped

190g unsalted butter

3 eggs

275 caster sugar

85g self raising flour

45 cocoa butter

60g milk chocolate, chopped

50g white chocolate, chopped (the supermarket was out of white chocolate [!] so I used Cadbury milk chocolate buttons.. luckily I bought two packs since I ate one entire one before I even attempted making the brownies....)

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and line a 20cm square tin.

Melt chocolate with butter.

Whisk eggs and sugar until thick and creamy.

Pour over chocolate and fold together.

Sift flour and cocoa and fold into chocolate mixture.

Stir in chopped chocolate.

Pour evenly into tin and bake for 25 minutes. Remove from tin when completely cold and cut into individual squares.

An adventure back in time..{Claudio Corallo chocolates from São Tomé and Príncipe}

Isn't it amazing when you just look at something and an idea pops right into your head?

That's what happened when I first saw a box of chocolates from São Tomé and Príncipe.

The box was packaged and labelled in a way that looked like it was something I would find on a ship during an exploration somewhere back in time... And so of course, I had to indulge my flmaboyant imagination and create a whole set that would look like something back in time.

The chocolates are wonderful. The box contained, among other types, 100% pure cocoa dark chocolate (!), different types of coffee beans coated with chocolate, ginger flavoured dark chocolate, sea salt and pepper flavoured dark chocolate. The sea salt and pepper flavoured dark chocolate is different than anything I've ever tried before. And amazing. I can't seem to have enough of it! The best part is that each piece is extremely thin. It's perfect for serving with coffee or as snacks for a meeting etc..

Check them out here: www.claudiocorallo.com

I think I spent an hour snapping hundreds of photographs. It was extremely enjoyable rearranging all the elements. And playing with the lighting.