My son has helped me learn to enjoy cooking. I do the cooking in our house and, I’ll not lie, our teatimes are never overly exciting. Since Christopher now loves to be involved in the cooking I enjoy it much more, keeping to my simple repertoire but adding in a brilliant stir-er, sweet pepper-pincher and adder-of-too-many-spices has definitely made cooking more fun. Since he enjoyed it so much, I started getting him involved in one of my regular me-time activites: baking. He has been promoted to chief-spoon-licker and although my scones are too over-worked EVERY. SINGLE. TIME now, they are made with love & lots of giggles and enjoyed more thoroughly as a result. We have been working through some brownie recipes lately so allow me a wee trip down memory-lane to explain why..
As a student I spent a couple of the long summer breaks working at Cawdor Castle. (it’s beautiful, worth the trip if you’re up in the Highlands, and I don’t even work there anymore so there’s no-one making me say that!) One summer we had a brilliant chef who made the BEST brownies ever, and when he was making them he would make an extra wee bundle so we could have some for lunch (see? Brilliant chef). A few of us asked him for the recipe but it was his own special family recipe and he wouldn’t budge…until my last day at the castle where he had folded the recipe neatly into the basket of goodies (best colleagues) they presented me with before going home. I was delighted, obviously, and went home to try and re-create the magic; I was not disappointed. As the years went on, I didn’t do very much baking and somehow the recipe got lost. (yes, I know.. I’m an idiot. Lesson learnt.)
I hadn’t baked brownies for years until my little boy was born. I found myself baking a lot when he was wee; an activity to keep my hands busy and my mind focused on recipe following instead of letting worries build up and overwhelm my head. My love for the brownie was rekindled a few months ago, much to my husband’s delight, so together with my little one we are on a journey to find that perfect brownie.. (though my husband’s part lies solely in the tasting. A necessary part of the team nevertheless!)
We’ve tried a couple of duffer recipes; some too cakey, one too gooey and a couple of too sweet recipes. We’ve added nuts, fruit, random bits of chocolate left at the bottom of a packet. I love adding things into a brownie but I’m looking for that perfect brownie base of a little goo in the middle with a hint of crunch on the top. The additions are very welcome but don’t necessarily make a difference in our quest for the perfect brownie. Our current fave is from the BBC Good Food website, with a few alterations. I’ll pop the link to the recipe in so you can give it a go and see what you think. (We reduce the amount of flour by a dessertspoon-ish, technical term, and use 180- 200g sugar instead of the 275- still sweet and still have a lovely paper thin crisp topping but less cakey and not too sweet. I add a few extra choc chunks, choc chips are a bit wee and just melt in, or some broken up crunchie bars for a bit of unnecessary extra yumminess, always well recieved.) The name of the recipe is a little misleading, however, as they are not the best EVER brownies. The Cawdor Chef ones were better.
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1223/bestever-brownies
I’m going to work from the GF recipe and keep tweaking to see if I can get closer to those CC ones. My strategy up until now was to test lots of different recipes from lots of different people, but now I wonder if using a good recipe and working with that as a base is more likely to yield the result that I’m after. If you have any suggestions for alterations that could get me a step closer to re-creating those unequaled brownies then let me know!
I love to bake but cooking is a massive pain. I haven’t told Christopher this truth about cooking in the hope that he will love it more than baking and let me have a night off once in a while. Get your kids involved in the cooking as soon as they are old enough to be interested. It means they are more keen to try food AND will prepare them to take over cooking duties as soon as they’re old enough for it not to be frowned upon. I’m on my way to having my own personal chef…fingers crossed!
myafrocelticclan 