Yo Joe

I’ve sat with this brownie recipe, and the little intro below, for quite a while now. I’ve tested them A LOT and seems like now is the right time to send you the recipe… I think you should make them.

For the first half of July, I lost all my words.

Maybe that isn’t fair to say, maybe it was more, I lacked words.

Maybe it was more that I felt lacking in all the good things, like words. Haha.

It lasted two weeks and two days this time round. I’m learning that when this feeling comes along, I’m worse off trying not to feel it, that is, fight the feeling of lack so that I might be able to keep up with my un-lacking friends and family. Obviously, to fight like this would be anyone’s instinctive reaction. Thing is, fighting it results in the sad moment where the state of lack makes itself known to you as something much more fixed than a sad mood that could juuuuust about be subsided with will power alone. I’m learning that the lacking state is much less painful if I lead a ‘lacking’ way of life during these times while I wait for it to pass. It passed.

Like it always does.

Now I feel like I’ve got words coming out my ears lol so I can write about these brownies I made during those 2 weeks, while Egg sat on the kitchen counter, patient with me in my lacking state, eating bread.

I hope that these pics can give you some of the good things if you feel lacking in them? Look into that chocolate abyss…mmmmm. These brownies are incredible. Rich, very rich, like molten chocolate pudding scooped straight from the oven or like smooth chocolate fudge once cooled with a wafer-thin crispy top, exactly the kind of top you’d want on a brownie. The raspberries and pistachios were Egg’s addition, I’d really recommend not leaving them out, you need something to cut through the pure fudge of these brownies.    

Ingredients:

• 300g dark chocolate
• 250g unsalted butter
• 400g light soft brown sugar
• 5 medium eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp salt
• 100g buckwheat flour – plain flour works perfect in these. The buckwheate flour has the benefit of making these brownies gluten free.
• 50g cocoa powder
• 30g pistachios – finely chopped
• 150g raspberries – if you wash these make sure to dry them a bit before adding them to the brownie batter.

Method

Pre heat the oven to 180 (160 fan oven). Grease and line with grease proof paper a 23cm square tin. If you don’t have this sized tin, find one of similar dimensions and keep an eye on it during baking as the timing will be slightly different.

Chop the chocolate and butter into chunks, place in a large bowl. Fill a small saucepan with a little water. Set the bowl of chocolate over the saucepan making sure the bottom of the bowl does not come into direct contact with the water when rested over the pan. Heat on a stove top on low/medium, stirring the chocolate occasionally until melted. Alternatively, put the chocolate and butter into a heatproof bowl and leave in the oven for a few minutes. Once melted, set aside.

In a separate bowl add the sugar, eggs, vanilla, and salt. Whisk these together until combined and a little lighter in colour (about 2 mins with an electric whisk).

To the egg mixture, add the melted chocolate, sift in the flour and cocoa powder and whisk to combine.

Pour the batter into the prepared tin, sprinkle with pistachios and scatter in the raspberries, submerging a few in the batter so they don’t all rest on top.

Bake for 40 (yes, 40) minutes, until the edges are set and a little cracked, but the centre still has a slight wobble. These brownies seem uncooked when they come out the oven, because of how wobbly the centre is, that’s how you want them to look. I promise they will set to be sliceable and perfect. Allow to cool completely in the tin before slicing.

Caitlin x