These brownies were a gift for special friends who had just welcomed an adorable new daughter. They also represented a challenge, letting E loose with cocoa (and coincidentally a white t-shirt). The friends/soon to be brownie recipients had previously explained that whenever they bake with their own wonderful toddler, not only does the recipe yield far fewer biscuits than it should because of tasting but the enitre kitchen and family are quite literally, caked. They even asked how we managed to stay clean to which I jokingly replied with my easy "how to bake clean with a toddler":
1. Don't make anything with chocolate/cocoa except when you fancy a challenge. Go lemon sponge, oat and raisin cookies, flapjacks, light coloured ingredients.
2. Dress toddler in colour similar to that of whatever you're baking (of course this is only ever a happy or unhappy accident...)
3. Focus the camera on the bowl, ingredients, kitchen, blur toddler to disguise actual mess.
4. Make smaller biscuits so as to deny the truth about how much the toddler ate/spilled/painted with.
6. Create a toddler who likes to be clean. See below where E, determined to have the cloth close by at all times rocks it as a ribbon in her hair! I blame her Dad.
These brownies may be a challenge for messy toddlers but they are made to
a very simple recipe found here to which we added a whole bar of chocolate in divine chunks for added goo and indulgence.
Measure out the ingredients
Squish the butter
Melt butter and sugar together
Measure out cocoa
If in doubt use the whole lot
Add cocoa to the butter/sugar mixture
Mix
Mess
Next, add flour
One egg
Two eggs
Three eggs
Four eggs
I'll just see what this feels like...
...or even better what it tastes like.
Add the eggs
Uh-oh! Dirty hands
and a cheeky chocolatey face
Add the chocolate chunks
And always have a cloth close by for cleaning up
Give it a big stir
Have a final obligatory taste test
and bake until slightly wobbly, first cracks appear. Cool, slice, package and post to a friend in need.
