The Ultimate Brownie Recipe

I'm a tough crowd when it comes to brownies. They have to be extremely chocolatey, moist, squidgy and rich, or what's the point? Shop-bought brownies are usually dry, heavy and disappointing, and many homemade ones are just as bad. I had never baked brownies before as I'd eaten so many rubbish ones that I thought it was inevitable that they turned out dry and flavourless unless you added huge amounts of oil. Then I discovered that there was a secret ingredient you could add to your brownie mixture in place of oil. It retained the rich, moist texture oil provides while also lightening the calories and fat:

I located a few mayo-brownie recipes online but all used full-fat mayonnaise. I only had Hellmann's Light in the fridge so tried that and it worked just fine, plus, it lightened the calories and fat even further. By the way, did you know Hellmann's only use free-range eggs in their mayo and have done for the past few years?

These brownies are among the best I've ever tasted. If you like your brownies rich, gooey, dense and chocolatey, this is the recipe for you!

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Ultimate Brownie Recipe, adapted from this one

Ingredients

Makes 24 brownie bites or 12 large brownies

• 85g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), broken into small pieces
• 85g plain flour
• 25g cocoa powder
• 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 100g caster sugar
• 40g light muscovado sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 medium free-range egg
• 2 tbsp buttermilk (I made my own substitute with semi-skimmed milk and a squirt of lemon juice)
• 100g light mayonnaise
• Handful of chocolate chips (optional)

Method

1. Heat oven to Gas Mark 4/180C. Melt the chopped chocolate in a large bowl over a pan of hot water, stirring occasionally and being careful not to over-heat as the chocolate will go gritty. Once it's melted, leave it to cool slightly.

2. Line the base of a square cake tin with baking parchment  and lightly grease the sides. Add the caster and muscovado sugars to the melted chocolate and stir in with a wooden spoon. Add the vanilla extract and buttermilk and one tablespoon of warm water. Beat in the egg then gently stir in the mayonnaise. Finally, add the flour, cocoa powder and bicarbonate of soda. Gently fold in until well combined. Add the chocolate chips if using and gently stir in.

3. Pour the mixture into the tin, gently spreading it into the corners. Bake for 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean with a few chocolatey crumbs stuck to it.

4. Leave to cool then tip out onto a large plate and slice into the desired number of squares. The brownies will keep for three days in an airtight container...if they last that long.

Jenny
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Malteser Cupcakes Recipe

I've taken a bit of a break from blogging, social-networking (I've missed you all) and, tragically, crafting for the past couple of weeks as I've been too busy with work to fit anything else in.  After two weeks of non-stop work, I spent Easter weekend painting, sanding, filling, glossing and doing all manner of other DIY-like things to my hallway so I feel I've earned a treat.  I made these cupcakes for my sister's birthday celebrations and kept a couple back to enjoy with a cuppa while I sat on the stairs, admiring my work so far/sinking into despair at how much more was left to do.  

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I've done Malteser Cookies, I've done Malteser Refrigerator Squares, and now Malteser Cupcakes.  What can I say?  I just love the chocolatey, malty deliciousness of a melt-in-the-mouth Malteser.  The actual cakes this recipe produces are not too sweet or rich but the mountain of Malteser frosting on top makes up for this!  I used Ovomaltine, the Italian version of Ovaltine, because I'm cosmopolitan and exotic like that.  And also because I just happened to have some leftover from my trip to Rome at Christmas.

This recipe produces a whopping 24 cupcakes as I needed that many for a family gathering.  It can easily be halved to produce 12.

Ingredients

Cakes (makes 24)

220g butter or butter style margarine

220g caster sugar

4 free range eggs

220g self-raising flour

4 heaped tbsp Ovaltine (the traditional kind, not the light version)

4tbsp milk

Malteser Frosting

500g icing sugar

75g Maltesers

250g butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

A few tbsp of milk, as required

Extra Maltesers for decoration

Method

Pre-heat oven to Gas Mark 4/160C

Cakes

1. Beat butter and sugar in a bowl until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs, flour, Ovaltine and milk.  Beat until smooth.

2. Split the mix into 24 paper cases, and bake for 15 - 20  minutes or until cakes have risen and the centres spring back when lightly pressed.  The cakes will have an ever so slightly sticky top.

3. Transfer to cooling rack and leave to cool.

Frosting

1. Using a blender, food processor or good old-fashioned bashing with a rolling pin, crumble, blend or crush the Maltesers until you have a fine Malteser dust.  There will be a few larger chunks of chocolate in the dust and that's fine:

2. Beat the butter until it begins to look pale and light.  Add the icing sugar, a third at a time, beating as you go.  Add the vanilla extract and beat until incorporated.  Add the Malteser dust and continue to beat until you have a light, fluffy buttercream.  You may need to add a few drops of milk to loosen the mixture as you work.  Add no more than 1tbsp at a time to ensure you don't loosen it too much. 

Pipe or spread the frosting onto the cupcakes and top with a Malteser.

  

Jenny

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Malteser Cookies Recipe

As my friends and family all know me very well, I always get lots and lots of Maltesers for Christmas and birthdays.  This is obviously brilliant, but even I have a limit as to how many Maltesers I can eat (I don't actually, that's a total lie, but I did fancy a change).  I made a Malteser Refrigerator Cake a few months ago which went down really well and I wondered if I could make Malteser cookies by adding some bashed up Maltesers to a basic cookie mix.

A quick search on Google revealed that others had gone before me and that the general consensus was that Maltesers do very nicely when incorporated into cookie mix and baked in the oven.  I adapted a basic cookie recipe and came up with the recipe below which produced 28 of these beauties:

These are by far the best cookies I've ever baked.  They're not as chocolatey as others, and not quite as sweet.  I think the dry centres of the Maltesers really takes some of the richness away, although I did make them pretty small so maybe that's the real reason I was able to eat three in one sitting.

Here is my recipe for the tastiest, chewiest, maltiest cookies:

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Malteser Cookie Recipe

Makes 20 - 30 depending on size

• 250g buttery-style margarine or softened butter
• 150g demerara sugar
• Half a teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 free-range egg, beaten
• 220g plain flour
• Quarter teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• Pinch of salt
• Crushed Maltesers to taste (I used about 130g)
• 50g milk or plain chocolate chips (optional)

Pre-heat the oven to 200C/Gas Mark 6

1. In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy and well combined.
2. Beat in the vanilla extract and egg until well combined.
3. Add the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt and mix well until mixture is smooth.
4. Add the crushed Maltesers and chocolate chips (if using) and stir well until evenly distributed throughout mixture.
5. Spoon generous dollops of mixture onto a baking sheet, leaving plenty of space around each one for spread.
6. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until the edges are light golden brown. Stand for a few minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

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The cookies are amazing straight from the oven but will keep well for a few days in an airtight container.  Even my boyfriend, who generally doesn't have a sweet tooth, loved these cookies.  They're delicious and I will definitely be baking these again soon.

Enjoy!

Jenny

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Triple Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix In A Jar

I'm a big fan of giving and receiving Christmas gifts that can be used up, whether that's eaten, drunk, poured into a bath or spent.  Unless I know someone wants something very specific, I always try to give them something I know they will be able to use up and won't have to keep lying around the house for years to come.  Last year, I gave several friends and relatives homemade jars of cookie mix as part of their present.  They went down really, really well so I'm doing a few more this year.

After trawling the Internet for hours last year trying to find the perfect cookie-in-a-jar recipe, I ended up combining a couple and adjusting the quantities to perfectly fit the 750ml jars I had.  The recipe below will fill this size jar perfectly and you can easily increase the quantities of each ingredient by, say, 25% to fit litre jars.

Of course, you have to do a trial run of the cookies, just to make sure they're good enough to give out as gifts...that's my excuse, anyway.  I don't like 'hard' cookies, so when I sampled the recipe, I baked the cookies for 10 minutes which gave a lovely, soft chewy texture.  If you like them more crunchy, bake for a few minutes longer until they're just right for you.

Triple-Chocolate-Chip-Cookie-Mix-In-A-Jar Recipe

Fills one 750 ml jar

60g white chocolate chips

60g dark chocolate chips

60g milk chocolate chips

15g Rice Krispies 

150g plain flour

Half tsp of bicarbonate of soda

Quarter tsp of baking powder

80g dark brown soft sugar

75g caster sugar

30g porridge oats

Layer the ingredients into your jar in any order you like, but see the tip below on the brown sugar.

Attach a label to your jar with the following instructions:

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Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes 24 small or 12 enormous cookies

1. Preheat oven to 180 C / Gas 4. 

2. In a large bowl, cream 75g of butter or margarine until light and fluffy. Mix in 1 egg and 1 additional egg yolk. Add the contents of the jar and stir until well blended.

3. Dollop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a baking tray.

4. Bake for 10 minutes for a soft, chewy cookie, or a couple of minutes longer for a crunchier cookie. Remove from baking trays to cool on wire racks.

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Tips on filling your jar

Obviously, you want the jars to look pretty but I found it a lot harder than it looks to get perfectly neat layers!  I just spooned the different ingredients into the jar and levelled them out as best I could.  

One thing I do recommend, is to mix the brown and white sugars together before adding them to the jar.  

Dark brown sugar has a tendency to harden and I read lots of comments on other cookie jar recipes from people who found they had to hack away at the brown sugar layer to get it out the jar!  Mixing the two certainly worked for me, and a jar I kept back for a couple of months was fine when I came to use it. 

Decorate your jar any way you like - I keep things simple with a length of ribbon and a customised gift tag.  Those retro style card luggage tags you can buy in stationery shops for pennies are perfect as they're big enough to write the baking instructions on!  

P.S How cute are my Santa and polar bear?  We had an almost identical Santa when I was a toddler in the 80s and I loved him. I was delighted when I saw this 2012 version in M & S and had to have him and his polar bear friend. Tacky, you say? Absolutely :-)

Jenny

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Malteser Refrigerator Cake

When I was little, a neighbour used to make an amazingly rich creation for parties that we kids all charmingly called 'Chocolate Poo Cake'.  I now know it to be more commonly known as Refrigerator Cake, or Traybake, being a mixture of melted chocolate, crushed biscuits, butter, and anything else suitable you have to hand, such as glace cherries or raisins.

I was planning on making two types of cupcake for a family party at my auntie's house this weekend, one fruit based and one chocolate based.  Whilst trawling the Internet for ideas for a Malteser cupcake, I came across several recipes for refrigerated traybakes and as I'm not one to turn down the easy option, I decided to go down this route instead.  

After assembling the most unhealthy group of ingredients I've ever used in one recipe, I was a bit worried it would be too rich but the dryness of the Malteser centres takes the edge off so it's definitely worth leaving them whole rather than crushing as I've seen in some recipes.  You definitely need to serve it in small squares though!

Recipe (makes approx 20 small squares)

200g milk chocolate
2 tablespoons golden syrup
100g butter
250g crushed digestive biscuits
135g Maltesers (one large bag)
100g white chocolate

1. Break the chocolate into small chunks and slowly melt over a low heat with the butter and syrup, stirring regularly (you can microwave but I prefer the bowl over a pan of hot water method)

2. Mix in the crushed digestives and the Maltesers until evenly combined

3. Pour into a large baking tray lined with clingfilm and press down to ensure an even thickness.  Leave in the fridge for a couple of hours or until fully cooled and set

4. Melt the white chocolate and drizzle or spread over the top. Return to fridge until set, then cut into small squares with a sharp knife.

Hell, yeah

Jenny

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