I’m pretty rubbish at making brownies as it happens but nonetheless here’s my recipe for them. Actually I should clarify; I am just fine at making the batter but the timing is where I tend to arse up. Everyone likes (or should like) squidgy, fudgy brownies but there is a fine line between that and raw batter. As for the flavour, a plain brownie has its place in the world but not with me. I like the little bites of creaminess and sharpness from the white chocolate and dried cranberry additions. But if you think you have a better flavour combination then fine. Go ahead. Go use your own additions. It’s ok. Just fine.

Anyway, back to the brownies. Even by my standards these little beauties are pretty rich so I reckon you could quite comfortably get 24 slices/ 12 portions from this quantity.

Oven temperature 180 Celsius

Dark chocolate                                     180g

Butter                                                     180g

Eggs                                                         3

Caster sugar                                          200g

Light muscavado sugar                       50g

Pinch of salt

Vanilla essence                                     1 teaspoon

Plain flour                                              120g

Dried cranberries                                 40g

White chocolate                                    120g

Preheat the oven. Line a rectangular baking tin, about 17 x 20cm big, with baking parchment (you can see how to do so here). Put the butter in a heatproof bowl and then break in the dark chocolate. Place over a pan of simmering water to happily melt away.

Once this buttery chocolate has melted take it off the heat and leave to cool for a few minutes or as long as your patience will allow.

In the meantime, put the eggs, sugars, salt and vanilla essence in a bowl and whisk till it goes pale and get’s all voluminous.

Chop up the white chocolate into chunks of your desired size.

Pour the melted chocolate into the eggy goo and whisk till nicely combined. Throw in the flour and stir a little then pop in the white chocolate and cranberries and stir gently to fully combine.

Pour the batter into the tin and into the oven with it.

Now here is the tricky bit. It should take about 25-30mins but it doesn’t always. Sometimes kitchen gremlins find their way into the oven and stop things from cooking or indeed turn your lovely gooey brownies into crap, dry sponge. The only thing you can really do is keep an eye on them.

What a helpful comment I hear you say.

Well, you definitely need to see a crust form on top of the brownies and the batter to have stopped wobbling uncontrollably but you do need a slight quiver under the crust. Unfortunately there’s not much else I can say about detecting the doneness of the little feckers. Sigh. The complexity of brownies.

(below is what they should like, minus my son trying to grab the entire tray)

Once you have made the courageous choice to remove the brownies from the oven you do have to leave them to cool down completely in the tin. They should firm up a little more as they cool too so have faith. If they have worked they will be delicious, if they haven’t I can only apologise. You can try put them back in the oven to cook a little more but regrettably they just won’t have the same wonderfulness as when you get the cooking time right the first time.

Best of luck.

(For this particular batch, I baked them for 28mins – rotating them 180 degrees after 15mins. After that I left them in the turned off oven, with the door ajar, for another 10mins. Then I left them cool down ENTIRELY in the tin. Seemed to work).