Super Simple Gluten Free Chocolate Brownies

Two weeks in a row... not bad going, right? ;-)

These brownies are lovely, rich and chocolatey, and with a few cheeky ingredients swaps, not as bad for you as you might think!!

It seems to have become a recent habit of mine to find a recipe, decide to try it, and then change it around a bit in the process of making it. This particular recipe started it's life as a 37-calorie brownie recipe, which Joy posted to the Cake'n'Bake club Facebook wall. My version is about 64 calories, as I used sugar instead of sweetener, and added some chocolate chips. They went down well in my office! (Note - the calorie content will change depending on the brands you use... I make no promises!) I'd also recommend using milk chocolate chips, as I found these injected a bit of sweetness into the rich chocolate brownie which just MADE them.

Ingredients:
50g rolled oats
175g low-fat natural yogurt (I actually used a soy yogurt which worked just as well)
50ml milk
70g cocoa
30g caster sugar
1 medium egg
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla extract
50g milk chocolate chips

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 12-15 minutes
Makes 16 brownies

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees and grease and line a square brownie tin.
2. Pop your oats into a blender and whizz to a fine flour - don't worry if there are a couple of bigger bits, as long and it's mostly ground.
3. Tip all of the ingredients into a bowl and mix together to form a thick batter. Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for 12-15 minutes, until springy to touch.
4. Allow the brownies to cool in the pan before turning out onto a chopping board and slicing into 16 squares.
5. Enjoy with a cup of tea, completely guilt free!!

Happy Thoughts
x

Cake'n'Bake Wedensday: Bailey's Blondies

These Blondies are also known as "Monica Geller's" because they came to be due to my uncontrollable need to please people.

What happened was this: on the day of our December meeting we had a few last minute cancellations, which under normal circumstances wouldn't pose a problem, but because of the Secret Santa theme we had in December 2012 it meant that some bakers would not receive their "gift" (i.e. have their word baked) and that simply wouldn't do.

I generally finish work at 5pm, and on club nights aim to get to the Friends Meeting House by 7pm to start setting up. Usually I take my bake club things to work with me in the morning, stay at work until 6:30pm and go straight from there, as work is about halfway between my house and the meeting house. This time, however, to ensure that everyone got their words baked, I left work bang on 5pm, ran to the supermarket to buy some ingredients, ran home, and started baking like a mad-woman! Anyway, I ended up getting a taxi up to the meeting house, and the brownies were still lovely and warm by the time I got there. Thankfully, Ruth had arrived before I did and started setting up shop :-) We then sat and ate some of the gooier brownies with spoons. It was a good day.

Anyway, the words that needed to be baked were Bailey's, Stars and Red. so below is my recipe for Bailey's Blondies with white chocolate stars and red edible glitter to decorate!


Ingredients:
200g slightly salted butter
100g white chocolate
2 medium eggs
135g caster sugar
100ml Bailey's Irish Cream
300g plain flour
Edible glitter and white chocolate stars to decorate (optional)

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 35 - 40 minutes
Makes 16 blondies

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and line a square tin with baking paper.
2. Put the butter into a small microwavable bowl and melt in the microwave. Place this to one side to cool.
3. Melt the white chocolate, either in the microwave in 20 second blasts, or in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Once melted, place to one side to cool.
4. Put the eggs and caster sugar into a large mixing bowl and beat until frothy. Beat in the cooled melted butter, Baileys and white chocolate. Finally add the flour to the mixture and fold in until just combined.
5. Pour the batter into the prepare cake tin, then sprinkle on the edible glitter and white chocolate stars, if using, to decorate.
6. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until golden brown in colour, and springy but still moist to touch. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the pan before turning out and cutting into 16 gorgeous, gooey brownies! (Blondies...!)

Happy Thoughts
x

Celebration Brownies

Ho ho ho!

I said I'd be back with Christmas bakes... and here we are!

Growing up, it was an absolute guarantee in my house that we'd have enough tins of chocolate to open up our own shop. My mum would always buy in some tins for when we had visitors, and the visitors would always bring along a tin so as not to come empty handed. We always had enough Roses, Quality Street, Celebrations and Heroes to last us well into the New Year, so that's my inspiration for this festive bake. I took these into work last week, and my colleagues loved them. Especially trying to figure out which chocolates appeared in their brownie - there was a good 10 minutes worth of "I think it's a Milky Way," "I had a Snickers", and "Oh my god there was a whole piece of Galaxy in that bite!" :-D

Prep time: 15 mins
Bake time: 40-45 mins
Makes 16 brownies

Ingredients:
225g margarine
75g cocoa powder
4 medium eggs
300g caster sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
150g self raising flour
Half a box of Celebrations (around 20 sweets)

1. pre-heat the oven to 180 and line a square brownie tin with greaseproof paper
2. melt the margarine in the microwave for 30 seconds, then stir in the cocoa powder. Place this to one side to cool. (You might want to start unwrapping the sweets at this point!)
3. in a large bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla until pale and foamy. Whisk in the cooled cocoa mixture until well combined.
4. sift half of the flour into the bowl and fold into the mixture. Sift the other half of the flour into the bowl, then add the sweets before folding in until all combined.
5. pour your mixture into the prepared brownie tin and level with the back of a spoon. Pop this in the oven for 35-40mins - when done the brownies should be springy to touch but still a little gooey in the centre
6. remove from the oven and allow the brownies to cool in the tin. Once cool, take out of the pan and cut into 16 pieces.

Banoffee Blondies

I had some leftover caramel and some overripe bananas to use up, so decided to have a little go at making some banoffee blondies, and so glad I did!

Prep time: 15 minutes
Bake time: 40 minutes baking
Makes 16 slices


Ingredients

150g margarine
250g soft brown sugar
150g caramel (I used some left-over, but you could just use caramel from a tin!)
2 ripe bananas
2 medium eggs
200g self raising flour
Milk chocolate shapes, for decoration

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 and line a square baking pan with grease-proof paper.
2. Place the margarine and sugar into a saucepan over a low heat, stirring continuously until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved. 
3. Remove the pan from the heat then stir in 100g of the caramel until it has all melted. Leave the mixture to cool slightly whilst you peel and chop the bananas into small chunks.
4. Add the eggs into the cooled mixture, then fold in the flour and bananas. Tip the mixture into the prepared baking tin and spread to the corners with the back of a spoon. Blob bits of the remaining caramel all over the top of the blondie, then sprinkle the milk chocolate shapes over the top. Bake for 40 minutes until golden brown and set.
5. Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before cutting into slices. (Be sure to eat at least one slice whilst it's still warm!)

Happy Thoughts,

x

Cake'n'Bake Wednesday: MBS&V Brownies

MBS&V = Mars Bar, Salt and Vinegar. Bear with me.

When we decided that the theme for February 2013 would be "guilty pleasures", I knew exactly what mine would be based on: a delightfully disgusting habit I discovered as a young teenager. See I was a young teenager in the early 2000's, in the time before Jamie Oliver launched his attack on Turkey Twizzlers and before anyone even considered sending their kids to school with a healthy, nutritious packed-lunch. So my packed lunch usually consisted of a soggy sandwich, a packet of crisps (Salt and Vinegar, naturally) and a chocolate bar. I've never been overly fond of sandwiches, so that usually got binned, and I spent my later school years (without my mother's knowledge or consent, I should add!) lunching on mars bars and salt and vinegar crisps. But boy did I know how to make the most of it! I would break the mars bar up into chunks, and put these INSIDE the bag of salt and vinegar crisps. I would then take a chunk of mars bar out of the crisp bag, sandwich it between two crisps, and shove the whole lot in my mouth in one bite. I know, it sounds disgusting, but trust me, the combination of crispy, crunchy, salty crisps, with sweet, gooey mars bar is the tastiest contradiction ones tongue could ever know.

As I got older and wiser I started eating healthy lunches, but ever so often I'd treat myself to my tasty guilty pleasure... so that's why we ended up with Mars Bar and Salt & Vinegar brownies! I found it quite amusing actually, that the last time I made brownies I did my best to strip back the fat and the sugar to make them has healthy as possible, but this time I added three chocolate bars and two packets of crisps, making them possibly the least healthy thing you could eat!

Prep time: 20 mins
Cook time: 40 minutes
Makes 12 brownies

Ingredients:
225g margarine
100g cocoa powder
3 mars bars
4 eggs
450g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
150g self raising flour
2 packets of salt and vinegar crisps

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 (180) and line a square cake tin with greaseproof paper.
2. Melt the margarine in a saucepan over a low heat. Once completely melted, remove from the heat and stir in the cocoa powder until a thick, smooth mixture forms. Leave this to one side to cool.
3. Whilst the chocolate mixture is cooling, chop your mars bars into bite-sized chunks.
4. Tip the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract into a large mixing bowl and whisk at a high speed until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is thick, pale and creamy. Fold in the cooled chocolate mixture and the chunks of mars bar until the chocolate is all stirred through.
5. Add the flour to the bowl and fold in until just combined, then transfer the mixture into the prepare baking tin.
6. Crush the crisps into small chunks and sprinkle these over the top of the brownie mixture. Bake for 40 minutes, until firm to touch. Allow the brownie to cool in the tin before cutting into chunks.

Happy Thoughts
x

Healthier Than Usual Brownies

It would be a lie to say this recipe was healthy, but with a few changes (and the help of an unexpected ingredient!) these brownies are much healthier than their traditional counterparts.

This recipe is based heavily on this recipe I found on BBC Good Food (I LOVE GOOD FOOD!), with a few extra changes to make the brownies even lighter! My dodgy old maths skills tell me that per brownie, there are approximately 104 calories and 3.5g fat - not too shabby for a chocolatey treat! I think this is my favourite of the healthier recipes I've posted this month, and even though I don't think the brownies tasted quite as good as normal full-fat full-sugar lots of chocolate brownies, they were still better than most store-bought brownies I've ever tried! I will definitely be coming back to this recipe again.

Ingredients:
50g dark chocoalte
75g dark brown sugar
3tbsp stevia
1tsp vanilla extract
40g (2tbsp) buttermilk
1 medium egg
120g extra light mayonnaise
85g plain flour
pinch of salt
40g cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder

Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 30 minutes
Makes 12 brownies

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 and line a square baking tin with greaseproof paper.
2. Melt the chocolate, either in the microwave on short bursts or in a bowl over hot water, then pop this to one side to cool slightly.
3. Stir the sugar, stevia, vanilla extract and buttermilk into the cooled chocolate until all combined. Beat the egg into the chocolate mixture, followed by the mayonnaise. The mixture should now be smooth and glossy.
4. Sift the flour, salt, cocoa powder and baking powder into the chocolate mixture and gently fold in until just combined. Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for 30 minutes, until firm but still a little sticky on top. 
5. Allow the brownies to cool in the tin, then turn them out, cut into 12 and enjoy the relatively guilt-free chocolatey goodness!

Happy Thoughts
x

... Ever After

Disney Classic # 50 - Tangled (again!)

OK, ok, so I know I've already given a really, really long post about the Rapunzel's Tower cake I made for Tangled at the Disney Night Finale. However, this wasn't my first choice of baked goodie for the 50th Disney Classic. You see, way back when I can't remember, I came across this recipe for white chocolate and macadamia brownies. Now, I'm a massive fan of white chocolate and macadamia anything, but what really drew me to this recipe was that these particular brownies, not being brown, were actually called "blondies". Perfect! In the movie Flynn's not-so-affectionate-to-begin-with nick name for Rapunzel is "Blondie", so these fitted in with the movie, and would be delicious, so they were on the list next to Tangled for a long time.

The problem was, as the finale grew closer, and the Disney Movie gang planned on having a big fancy-dress BBQ to celebrate, I started to realise that blondies weren't really "grande finale" material. I mean, they were delicious, seriously delicious, like so delicious I would recommend that if you only try one recipe from this whole blog that this is the one you try delicious.They just didn't seem to express the joy/sadness/relief that came with the approaching end of a project that took over a year of our lives. And so the tower cake was born.

But, (there's always a but!) white chocoate macadamia brownies just seemed like the right thing to do. So I did both. It's not the first time I've baked two different things for one movie (Robin Hood had two recipes, and Make Mine Music saw three varieties of Whoopie Pie produced!) and this was going to be the last one, so I don't feel bad. Doubled the baked goods = double the fun!

Prep time: 20 mins
Cook time: 20 mins
Makes around 12 brownies (depending how big/small you'd like them)

Ingredients:

125g margarine
200g white chocolate chunks
2 medium eggs
100g caster sugar
1tsp vanilla essence
125g plain white flour
A pinch of salt
75g macadamia nuts

1. Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 4 and grease and line a square baking tin.
2. Heat a medium sized pan of water until just boiling, then remove from the heat. Place the margarine and half of the white chocolate into a glass bowl and rest this in the pan of hot water. Stir continuously until the margarine and chocolate have completely melted, taking extra special care not to get any water in the bowl of chocolate. Once the margarine and chocolate have completely melted and combined, remove from the pan of water and leave to one side to cool slightly.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar and vanilla essence. Once combined (and once it has cooled sufficiently!) add the chocolate and margarine mixture to to the eggs and sugar and continue to whisk until a smooth and glossy batter has formed.
4. Add the flour, salt, remaining chocolate and macadamia nuts to the batter and fold in until only just combined. Pour the batter into the prepared baking tin and bake for 20 minutes, or until springy to the touch and completely golden on top.
5. Allow the blondies to cool in the pan for at least 15 minutes before cutting into squares to serve. Best served slightly warm!

Well, here's where I'd normally say what I'll be baking next time, but without any further Disney classics on the cards for a while, I'm afraid there isn't a "next time" as yet! Don't be too sad though, because Disney morals teach us to see every end as a new beginning, and coming to the end of one collection may just signify the right time to start another collection. Watch this space, and until then...

Happy Thoughts
x

The Best of Friends

Disney Classic # 24 - The Fox and the Hound

Now this was one of my more clever ideas. I thought of it quite early on in the challenge, and haven't been able to come up with anything quite as good since. I took the idea from the film of using two things that stereotypically shouldn't go together, (such as a fox and a hound dog), but that actually work really well together, (such as Todd and Copper becoming best friends despite the notion they are natural enemies.) And that's how we ended up with chocolate chilli brownies ^_^ One would think that chocolate and chilli shouldn't go together, but actually they taste great!

Chocolate and chilli, the best of friends.

I based this recipe on one I found on a recipe card in my local supermarket back in February (it was a valentines recipe). As a side note - I love picking up recipe cards in supermarkets... they should do more of them! Anyways, these brownies are fairly simple and very very tasty - they are deliciously warming on a winters evening with a good cup of tea; I definitely recommend giving them a go!

Prep time: 20 mins       Cook time: 35-40mins      Serves: 9
Ingredients:

1 red chilli pepper
225g margarine
100g cocoa powder
4 medium eggs
450g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
150g self raising flour
1 tsp extra hot chilli powder
icing sugar for dusting

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 and grease and line a square baking tin.
2. Melt the margarine in a small saucepan over a low heat. Once the margarine has completely melted, remove from heat and stir in the cocoa powder. Leave to one side to cool for 10 minutes.
3. Whilst the cocoa is cooling, chop the chilli pepper as finely as you are able to. Discard most of the seeds, but don't worry if a few are left over.
4. Tip the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract into a large bowl and whisk until pale and foamy. 
5. Stir in the cooled cocoa mixture, the flour and the chillies and beat until well combined. Tip the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 35-40mins, until the top is firm but the middle is soft.
6. Allow the brownies to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Dust with icing sugar and slice into squares to serve. 

Next week we're watching The Black Cauldron, and I'll be making traditional Welsh Cakes.

Happy Thoughts
x