Mothers Day, sweet
For dessert we served the chewy chocolate brownies with a dollop of double cream, a scoop of So Good vanilla soy ice cream and a sprinkling of chopped peanuts.
Mmmmmmm, double cream.
The recipe for the brownies came from Jac’s Good Housekeeping All Colour Cook Book. It’s so easy. Gather ingredients, mix thoroughly in bowl, pour into cake tin and bake.
I used Jac’s Braun handheld electric mixer to beat the mixture, but as I was mixing I caught the whiff of a weird smell and Jac said “Oh my god, it’s smoking!”. Heheh, I guess the brownie mixture was too thick for the mixer to handle. It was making very strange noises, though I did think it was due to my non-existent handheld mixer technique (but now I know what a dying handheld mixer sounds like). Luckily by this time most of the ingredients had blended together quite well, so I finished mixing it all with a wooden spoon. And the mixer still works, thankfully (Jac used it to puree the soup afterwards)! I must save up and buy a proper heavy duty mixer for baking (it would help me feel more like Nigella as I bake too!).
I used butter, not margarine as per the recipe, and the mixed nuts I used were just what we had in our miscellaneous nut jar – some chopped walnuts and almonds. What I’d like to do next time I make this recipe is use just hazelnuts, so that the brownies have a Nutella-like flavour. That would be sooooo yummy. Everyone enjoyed their dessert anyway (I just had a bite of Jac’s, and that was pretty yummy… very moist and chocolatey), which was good. And we still have brownies, double cream and ice cream left for re-enactments :).
The Mothers Day 2006 flickr set is here (people photos are friends and family only).