Saturday Night

 One of my new year's resolutions was to try a new recipe every month. I've never had much luck with brownies. Even Betty Crocker packet mixes tend to fail in my hands. My mum gave me this book for Christmas a couple of years ago and I found a yummy looking recipe for brownies in it and thought I'd give them one last go.

 Being a very visual person, I absolutely love that every step is photographed. I usually give recipes a miss that don't at least have an end result photo, because I like to make sure I'm generally on track. Having a picture of every step pretty much guaruntees no mistakes.

Well, it guaruntees no mistakes if you actually pay attention. I might have taken mine out of the oven a little too early and then forgotten about it, so it fell apart a bit when I was trying to put it on the cooling rack. BUT it was pretty freaking delicious. And since I've never been one for amazing presentation, I just decided that the best way to eat it was in random chunks with a heap of ice cream.

So, a recipe for amazingly tasty, but not too beautiful brownies..

Ingredients:

* 225g butter, softened

* 150g plain chocolate, broken into pieces (I used Green's 70% dark chocolate.. yummo!)

* 225g self-raising flour

* 125g caster sugar

* 4 eggs, beaten

* 75g pistachio nuts, chopped

* 100g white chocolate, roughly chopped (I accidentally bought Lindt Lindor white chocolate, which is gooey inside. Turned out to be a delicious mistake)

* icing sugar, for dusting

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and line a 23cm baking tin.

2. Place the plain chocolate and the butter in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water. Stir until melted, then leave to cool slightly.

3. Sift the flour into a seperate bowl and stir in the caster sugar.

4. Stir the eggs into the chocolate mixture, then pour into the flour and sugar and beat well.

5. Stir in the nuts and white chocolate.

6. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin, using a pallete knife to spread evenly.

7. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until firm to the touch around the edges. Cool in the tin for 20 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

8. Dust with icing sugar. Cut into 12 squares (or let it break into as many pieces as it feels like) and serve.

I also tried the scones from this recipe book, just to see what they'd be like. I was pretty disappointed. I never use sugar in my scones, but these ones did, and it was all I could taste. I think I'll just stick to my tried and tested boring recipe.