Gooey Chocolate Brownies

Alternatives

You can swap the 250g dairy free margarine for 250g unsalted butter if you don't mind using dairy. If you don't have gluten free self-raising flour, you can use gluten free plain flour, but add 1 tsp baking powder in with it. You can use standard plain flour in place of the gluten free flour if you don't mind using gluten - but add 1 tsp baking powder to the dry ingredients if you do. 

Method

• Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
• Line a 24 x 20cm square baking tin with greaseproof paper (See Notes: The Skewer test).
• Break the chocolate into pieces in a large bowl and add the margarine. Place over a pan of simmering water (A bain-marie) until fully melted, stirring regularly. 
• Once the chocolate and butter mixture has melted, stir through the chopped nuts and dates if you are using those.
• In a second bowl, sift the cocoa powder and flour and add in the caster sugar. This is also where you would add the baking powder if you are using plain flour. Mix all these dry ingredients together.
• Add the mixed dry ingredients to the melted chocolate, nut and date mixture and combine the two with a wooden spoon or spatula.
• Beat the eggs together, then mix in until you have a silky consistency.
• Pour the brownie mix into your lined baking tin and place in the oven for 35 mins. Check with a skewer and adjust until the skewer has no raw brownie mix on it.
• Take the tray out of the oven and leave the brownies to cool in the tin. Transfer the contents to a chopping board and cut into 20 Chunky Brownies.

Enjoy just as they are or add a little ice cream to finish.

Notes: The Skewer test

I used a 24 x 20 cm baking tray for this recipe. When testing to see if a cake is done, you insert a skewer or knife into the centre and when it comes out clean, with nothing sticking to it you know the cake is baked. However, with brownies you don't want the skewer to come out clean. You want it to have fudgy brownie on it, but not raw brownie mix. When I tested my brownies at 25 mins I still got raw mix on my skewer so I left it in for 5 more minutes, checked again and ended up leaving it another 4 or 5 minutes before I was happy! You will know what the uncooked mix looks like from making the mix, and you can check away from the centre to see how far in it has baked through. This is why the skewer test is so useful, no matter what size tin you end up using or the depth of your brownies you can use it to tell exactly when your tray is baked to perfection.

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