Divine Double Chocolate Brownies

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.