Step-by-step: melt-in-your-mouth brownies
Serves: 8-10
Preparation time: 12 minutes
Cooking time: 25 minutes
You will need:
A 30cm x 20cm x 5cm tin, fully lined with non-stick greaseproof baking paper, roughly cut to size. Silverwood does great brownie tins (alansilverwood.co.uk; 0121 454 3571). You can also use a roasting tin of around the same dimensions. To get a crusty top and a nice chewy soft inside, the tin should be no shallower than 3.5cm.
Ingredients:
175g plain chocolate with 70 per cent cocoa
175g butter, room temperature and roughly cubed
85g self-raising flour
40g good-quality cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp fine sea salt
5 medium eggs
300g unrefined organic caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
115g walnut halves, roughly chopped
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4. Break the chocolate into squares and put in a heatproof bowl with the butter. Melt over a pan of barely simmering water for five minutes. Make sure the base of the bowl does not touch the water. Take off the heat. It will still be lumpy at this stage, so stir immediately, until smooth. Leave until ready to use, but it should still be lukewarm and runny.
[See also: How to make perfect summer pudding]
2. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt twice into a bowl. Put to one side. Using either electric beaters (it will take around three minutes) or a hand whisk, whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla essence together in a large mixing bowl, until thickened and mousse-like.
3. Stir the sifted flour and cocoa a quarter at a time into the egg mixture and stir with a wooden spoon, until well combined. Pour in the melted chocolate and stir thoroughly to mix – it should have a batter-like consistency. Finally, fold the roughly chopped walnuts evenly through the mixture.
4. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 25 minutes. It should form a crust on top that is just starting to crack around the edges, and yet still be soft in the centre. Put the tin on a wire rack and leave to cool. Transfer the brownie and its paper to a board and cut into squares. To finish, you can also dust with either icing sugar or cocoa powder. The brownies will keep for up to a week in an airtight container.
Creative Director, Mary Norden. Photographs, Richard Jung. Recipe and food styling, Linda Tubby. Prop styling, Roisin Nield.
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