It's #NationalChocolateCakeDay today - I'll be honest, I had no idea until an email landed in my inbox last week from the lovely people at Num Noms ! - but it sounded like a great excuse for eating cake to me, so I was all up for it ! To help us celebrate, they sent us through a lovely kit, including everything we needed for making and decorating a chocolate cake, as well as some Series 4 Num Noms.
I'd promised the kids that I'd make some brownies when I got back from Norway, so I decided to put the cake kits away for another day and make some brownies from scratch instead. Brownies still count as chocolate cake, right ?! Here's the recipe that we used, based on one by Paul Hollywood from his How To Bake book that I got for my birthday last year (although he added dried cranberries and walnuts to his and used all dark chocolate).
Chocolate Brownies
ingredients :
100g butter
100g dark chocolate (72% cocoa solids)
100g milk chocolate
4 eggs
250g sugar
100g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
30g unsweetened cocoa powder
Preheat the oven to 180°. Line a 20cm square baking tin with baking parchment.
Break the chocolate into pieces in a bowl. Add the butter and melt in the microwave (or in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water). Stir until smooth and glossy. Leave to cool slightly.
In a separate bowl, use an electric hand-held whisk to beat together the eggs and sugar until pale and thick enough to leave a trail when the beaters are lifted.
Gently fold the chocolate into the egg mixture.
Add the flour, baking powder and cocoa to the bowl and gently fold them in.
Pour into the baking tin and bake for 30 minutes or so, until nicely crusted on top but still soft inside.
Leave to cool before cutting into squares. Serve warm or cold.
Totally gooey, rich and moreish, just as a brownie should be. Juliette was very impressed ... both by the brownies and by the new series 4 Num Noms. (Apparently I'm rubbish and picked out any old Num Noms from her collection for the photo rather than the new ones. I just opted for the ones that looked like they represented cake or chocolate !)
The Series 4 Sweets Sampler includes a gorgeous chocolate-scented Num called Hottie Chocolate, who is perfect for #NationalChocolateCakeDay. Other delicious-sounding Series 4 Nums include Choco à la Mode, Rainbow Crunch and Madelyn Macaron. Aah macarons - they are my baking nemesis, so I think I'll stick to chocolate cake ! (If you want a giggle at my #MacaronFail, click through - you'll soon see why I dubbed them Monster Poo !)
Disclosure : We received some Num Noms and a baking kit to celebrate #NationalChocolateCakeDay.
I didn't know it was a chocolate cake day, but I did bake a chocolate cake. Pierre looks so grown up. And the brownie is delicious. Can't beat a warm brownie straight from the oven.
ReplyDeleteHe was straight out of the hairdressers - not overly keen on the new haircut (with gel on top !) but it'll grow out !!
DeleteLooks great - we are a day late making our brownies! They're in the oven now - cant wait :-)
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