I hate shopping. Yup, you heard it right. The reason being, I forget many things that I actually need to get when I go out shopping. I do prepare a list beforehand but forget to take the list itself and so the purpose of actually going shopping never becomes fruitful. The one in the to get list which got blatantly forgotten over the past months was a square baking pan. I had none and I was hoping to get one and finally got one too.

I had been wanting to try my hand at brownies for some time now and had been waiting for the square pan to get the shape perfectly. I scouted around for some brownie recipes that’s easy to bake and landed up here . This recipe sounded so easy and so I chose this one for my first brownie bake. I must say that I was not disappointed and the children loved it very much. The only thing I felt bad about was that I did not double the recipe and hence got thin sheet like squares unlike the fat ones I was hoping for. The fact that brownies will not rise like the cakes went completely out of my mind.

Katherine Hepburn Brownies

Adapted from Joy Of Baking

Dark Chocolate – 1/4 cup (coarsely chopped)

Butter – 100 gms

Sugar – 100 gms

All Purpose Flour – 4 tbsp

Eggs - 2

Vanilla essence – 1/2 tsp

Salt – 1/4 tsp

Preheat the oven to 180 Deg C. Butter and flour a 8 inch square baking tray. I lined mine with butter paper for easy handling.

Using double boiler method melt the coarsely chopped chocolate and butter together. I heated a big kadai half filled with water and immersed a small vessel in which the butter and chocolate were placed. Both will melt from the heat of the water.

Remove from heat and add sugar. Keep stirring so that the sugar will get dissolved in the heat. Now add vanilla and eggs and keep stirring so that they all mix well. Finally add the flour and and mix well. Pour the prepared batter into the greased tray and bake for 30-35 min or till a skewer comes out clean. I baked mine for an extra 5 min to get a good crust. Let it cool completely. Cut and serve with cream or vanilla ice cream.

I read some where that one of the best way to set the brownie is to keep it refrigerated after it cools down for 10 min. Like wise after taking it off from the oven I let it rest 10 min over a wire rack and then shoved into the freezer for 15 min. When I peeled of the butter paper and cut, it came out perfectly.

Notes:

The original recipe used unsweetened chocolate bar. Since I couldn’t get it here I used Dark Chocolate used for baking and reduced the sugar by half.

If you are using salted butter avoid the salt in the recipe.

Oven timings may vary accordingly.



