24 January 2010
Recipe - Baking Chocolate Brownies For Haiti
Our children's school council have decided to run a cake stall tomorrow to raise money for Haiti. I feel especially moved by Haiti as my grandmother was born next door in the Dominican Republic, which has escaped the horrors of their neighbours. This recipe is something my daughter and I cooked up this afternoon.
Ingredients
220g / 7oz butter, organic where possible
450g / 16oz caster sugar, organic & Fairtrade where possible
90g / 3oz cocoa powder, organic & Fairtrade where possible (Suma do a great one)
270g / 9.5oz self raising flour (we used an organic flour by Sunflours)
4 eggs (ideally organic & free-range please)
4TBSP milk, organic if possible
1tsp Steenbergs organic Fairtrade vanilla extract
100g / 3.5oz chocolate, ideally organic & Fairtrade - we used Green & Blacks cooking chocolate, which we bashed into small chunks with a rolling pin
Lightly grease a metal baking tray and line the base with baking parchment. Heat the oven to 180oC /350oF.
Sift the organic self-raising flour and organic Fairtrade cocoa powder together into a large mixing bowl. Add the caster sugar, butter, free range eggs, milk and Steenbergs vanilla extract to a food processor. Whizz it all up together. Add the flour-cocoa mix and process once again until you have got a sloppy, dark brown mixture.
Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and then add the chocolate chunks. We then gave it a gentle stir with a knife to mix in the chocolate bits, then smoothed over the top to give a roughly even covering.
Bake for 20 - 25 minutes until just set in the middle - a wooden skewer into the centre should come out with just a few moist crumbs on it. Don't overbake.
Leave to cool completely in the pan before cutting into squares and serving, or in this case boxing up to take to school tomorrow.
[Sorry no photos today as I have left the camera at work!]
Update 29/1/2010: the school raised £142 for the Haiti appeal which for 100 children is truly brilliant.
