Simple Delights: Easy Brownie Recipe

Brownies...what more can I say!

Brownies are a staple in my house. Whether I’m in the mood for something sweet, or a quick desert for company, Brownies always are my number one choice. Cooking with chocolate may be tricky, that’s why I chose to post this easy recipe. Usually when I bake brownies, I don’t have time for a big production and I want something sweet now.  What makes it easy are two factors: 

1) When baking chocolate desserts, usually you need to melt cooking chocolate, or use semi-sweet or unsweetened chocolate. Now this poses two problems, it’s hard to find unsweetened chocolate in Egypt, and sweetened cooking chocolate will throw off the sugar content of the desert. And melting the chocolate is usually a hassle, as you don’t want it to burn but at the same time you don’t want to wait an hour for it to melt.  

Solution: Use cocoa powder. 

2) Classic brownie recipe calls for shortening or softened butter. With no good substitute for Crisco in Egypt, and the use of our local Ghee or Samna is out of the question, one would have to use butter. Again, if it is too cold, it will lump, and if you over heat it will be totally liquid. 

Solution: Use oil as the fat substitute. 

We will keep the more complicated chocolate recipes for later.

All of my cook books use both butter and cooking chocolate for their brownie recipes. So I have devised one of my own, using cooking chocolate to cocoa substitution and lots of trial and error.

Ingredients:

- ½ cup Flour

- ½ cup Oil

- 1 cup Sugar

- 2 Eggs (Make sure they are not very small, Medium to Large size preferred.)

- ½ cup Cocoa Powder

- ½ tsp. Baking Powder

- ¼ cup warm Water

- 1 tsp. Vanilla extract

- pinch of salt

Preparation (Approx. 10 mins)

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Blend the eggs, sugar and vanilla very well, until smooth. 

Add in the oil. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, cocoa powder, salt). 

Slowly add in the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, whisking manually while doing so. 

Batter should be very thick at this point.

Add in the water and combine without over mixing. If your eggs are very large and the batter is a bit too wet, omit the water.

Pour the batter into a well greased 20 cm x 20 cm pan (or a Rectangular 28 cm x 18 cm).

Put in the oven for about 20 mins for fudgey brownies add 5-7 mins for more cakey ones. Allow to cool before cutting.

Enjoy!