Chocolate brownies

Difficulty: Easy

Time: 30 minutes + 45 minutes

Serves: 24 pieces

Ingredients
275g softened butter
375g caster sugar
4 large eggs
75g cocoa powder
100g self raising flower
100g plain chocolate chips (or chocolate cut up)

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Today we went to a coffee morning/cake sale at Hannah’s playgroup. Chocolate brownies are my favourite thing to bring to these things: they are relatively simple to make, tend to go down well and I’ve generally got all the ingredients in the cupboard. I’ve also been lucky up until now that Hannah’s never really wanted to eat chocolate so I’ve not had to stop her from licking the spoon … unfortunately I think those days are now officially over).

This recipe comes from one of Mary Berry’s books and is super easy as you just have to measure everything into one bowl and mix it together!

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 180C / 160 Fan.

Prepare a 30 x 23 cm baking tin
Get your toddler to grease the baking tin. I normally just tear off a corner of the butter packet or some grease proof paper and use that to spread butter in the tin. Once greased, line the base and sides with baking parchment.

Measure out the ingredients
Measure all the ingredients into a bowl. (375g sugar, 100g flour, 75g cocoa powder, 4 eggs). We used a small bowl to weigh everything out in turn and then added them into the mixing bowl. Face the scales towards you so you can see how much is going in and either use a spoon or pour the ingredients in.

Measure the butter (275g) out and get your toddler to cut it into small chunks. If it’s slightly softened they should be able to do this with a butter or table (ie not sharp) knife. If it’s too hard, try zapping it in the microwave for a few seconds.

The recipe calls for chocolate chips – i don’t tend to have these in the house, but we’ve always got some kind of chocolate in the cupboard so today we just used 100g from a bar of white chocolate. I cut it up into small pieces with a sharp knife and Hannah popped it into the mixing bowl.

Mix everything together
I got a new mixer for Christmas which Hannah loves so we used that to mix everything together, but you could just use a wooden spoon or a hand held mixer. You’re done when it all looks evenly blended.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin, using a spatula spread the mixture gently into the corners and level the top.

Bake your chocolate brownies
Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes. The brownies are cooked when the top has a nice crust and a skewer put in the middle comes out clean. If it starts to look a bit brown on top, cover loosely with foil for the last 10 minutes.

Leave the chocolate brownies to cool in the tin then cut them into 24 squares (or fewer if you want bigger pieces).