"Stuff yourself and get thin"

SO I don't blog for a million years and then I do one about my worst nightmare of a dessert.

However, the Dalton family (including respective boyfriends) seemed to love these bad boys and I did promise a while ago that I would share my culinary exploits more often...

Chocolate Peanut Butter Brownies. I hate nuts. In all forms. If you don't like nuts, it's just a nice recipe for chocolate brownies. I'll just type out the instructions as given in the online recipe as well as the little amendments that I made along the way. The original also called for pretzels. But that just seems gross. However, the photos over there are MUCH better than mine because obviously I forgot and took some sporadic photos on the train home....

You have to make it in two parts, one part chocolate mix and the other peanut butter.

For the chocolate bit:

8 tablespoons of unsalted butter. (These were obviously stupid instructions, who uses a spoon for butter?! I just substituted tablespoons for ounces).

2 ounces unsweetened chocolate

4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate (erm, didn't know what this weird "semi-sweet" stuff is, I just used 6 ounces of dark cooking chocolate but you can put in what you like.)

1 teaspoon instant coffee

3/4 cup of granulated sugar. (Again, the weird 'cup' thing. I actually have a variety of 'cup' measuring implements at home. I wouldn't be sure how to work it out without them but I suppose that a normal coffee cup would be just fine, just stay consistent throughout.)

3 large eggs.

1 teaspoon of pure vanilla essence.

2/3 cups of all purpose flour.

1/2 teaspoon of baking powder.

1/4 teaspoon of salt.

Course sea-salt for topping.

1. Place rack in upper third of oven, preheat to 325F. Grease 8x8 baking tray, line with parchment/greaseproof paper and grease it again.

2. Boil a little bit of water in a pan. Put the butter, chocolate (break it into small bits) and coffee in a heat proof bowl and pop it over the water (make sure the bottom of the bowl doesn't touch the water... bad things happen...) Stir until everything is melted and then take the bowl off, add the vanilla extract and leave it to cool.

*Don't throw the water away. It shall be used again...

3. In a little bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt.

4. Whisk the sugar into the choc/butter mixture. Make sure that the mixture is quite cool and then whisk in the eggs one at a time (it should go really gloopy and thick).

5. Fold in the flour mixture (wooden spoon, figure of eight, gently gently...) and then pop it into your pre-heated tin. Don't worry if it doesn't quite go out to the edges of the tin, it will get bigger when it's cooking.

For the peanut butter bit...

4 tablespoons of unsalted butter

1/2 cup of powdered sugar (I just used icing...)

3/4 cup smooth peanut butter (We only had crunchy, everyone seemed to like crunchy...)

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Melt the butter in the same way as before.

2. Whisk together the peanut butter, the melted butter, sugar, salt and vanilla until smooth.

* If your peanut butter has been in the fridge for about 2 years and is completely solid, take the water that you melted the butter in off the heat (or you'll melt the container) and pop the peanut butter jar into the hot/warm water and it will get all lovely and soft. DO NOT PUT IT IN THE MICROWAVE. Peanut butter labels are made of foil. Foil and microwaves don't get on. Yesterday, my Mum learnt this the hard way...

3. Pour the peanut butter mix on top of the brownie mix and swirl them together in any pattern you like. Top with the sea salt (only a bit, salt and chocolate is just too weird....) and put into the oven for 40/45 mins. When the time is done, pop a skewer/knife in and check that it comes out clean. If it doesn't, it just ain't ready.

So there you have it. Just in case you ever had the urge... And I WILL blog again soon. Properly.