That Brownie Recipe

A friend of my boyfriend’s had a habit of whipping up brownies at her parties (usually around midnight or one am) – it was indeed a good habit to have (for us anyway). They were amazing, soft, chewy and thoroughly unhealthy tasting – an all round great tasting brownie. When I asked her for the recipe, she just told me it was in the Donna Hay cookbook. But which one? Amazon lists 69! Fortunately for me, my housemate happened to have a few of her books and pulled out a brownie recipe. It was simple (the sort one could whip up at odd times of the early morning if inclined) and it was decadent. It had to be it.

There was more than one batch of those brownies done but I stopped baking and the housemate moved to another city with the cookbook and I found myself on Wednesday night having a terrible brownie craving and no recipe. I had STUPIDLY never written the damn thing down.

I searched all over the internets and found some lovely brownie recipes including a few that were from Donna:

• Brownie Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting (Katie’s Kitchen)
• Double Chocolate Brownies (Though small, it is tasty – who also gave recipes from a yummy veggie feast for a friend)
• Totally coco crispy ricotta and brownies torte (from the totally charming foodbeam)
• The Barefoot Contessa’s Outrageous Brownies (The Cookbook Critic)

But no simple one-pot, no melting of chocolate bits brownie recipe. So then I had the brilliant idea of calling the ex-housie and asking her which cookbook it came from – she was after all in just a different city not a different country! It was Off The Shelf. And here is the so simple, one could almost do it blindfolded, recipe:

Mix the following ingredients in a bowl with a wooden spoon until smooth:
250g soft butter
1 1/3 cups plain (all-purpose – ie not self-raising) flour
2 1/4 cups sugar (I used brown sugar)
3/4 cup cocoa
4 eggs
1/4 tsp Baking powder

Spoon it into a baking tin and cook for 40-50 mins in a 170C oven. I had quite a big tin so the stuff was spread fairly thinly – I reckon I probably could have gone 35 mins for extra gooey-ness.

For an Americanised version of the recipe and a picture of them as adorable cupcakes check out Taste and Tell’s Browniebabe.

The good thing about this recipe is that because it’s so dense, it keeps moist for ages (well, if you can stop people eating them – very hard!).