Sugar highs

Have been baking like a mad woman this week. I blame the food channel. First it made me make a lamb tagine, which was lovely. Then I felt compelled to bake a second round of brownies for a party at work tonight because the blinking Barefoot Contessa made peanut butter frosting and I then read Dan Lepard's blog about peanut butter chocolate cupcakes. 

After the brownies and, actually ever since the rolling of the peppermint creams in cocoa powder, I was still craving that cocoa hit. So then I saw this Rachel Allen recipe for chocolate melts. And it was done so quickly I tried it last night. Am impressed. The cookies aren't actually very sweet, you can throw them together in a jiffy, they're easy to do, and they're in an amount easy enough to handle as a snack. Perfect toddler-diverting activity if it rains again this bank holiday weekend. 

But the peanut butter icing is a bit of a letdown. I think it's because I'm so used to the savoury no-sugar crunchy peanut butter I've been eating. Not as roof-stickingly satisfying as just eating peanut butter from a jar. Not that that's something I do. Often. 

Chocolate melts

125 g butter - very soft

50 g icing sugar

50 g cocoa powder

100 g plain flour

Nutella/peanut butter

1. Put oven at 180 degrees C.

2. Mix all ingredients except Nutella/peanut butter, form 24-30 balls.

3. Squash balls flat with back of wet fork.

4. Bake 15-20 mins.

5. Let cool before moving from baking sheet.

6. Sandwich with Nutella/peanut butter or both.

Current favourite brownie mix chocolate proportions

3 eggs + 1 yolk

150 g dark chocolate

100 g dark chocolate chips

250 g butter

300 g caster sugar

70 g cocoa powder

60 g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

cupcake cases

Optional: walnuts, 2 tbsp espresso

1. Set oven to 180 C.

2. Zap butter and chocolate (not the chips) in microwave until melted.

3. Beat eggs and sugar with electric mixer until voluminous. Well, more than before.

4. Mix butter and chocolate with eggs and sugar.

5. Sift in everything else and mix. Add chocolate chips and nuts/espresso at end. 

6. Put about a heaping tablespoon in each cupcake case (I use the mini ones, not the American-sized ones). 

7. Bake er until done. About 20-30 ms maybe, but check with toothpick.

NB The cupcake cases help prevent too much of a mess when cutting up the brownie, which can be a bit crumbly. If you up the 2 tbsp of espresso to 4, you've pretty much got the equivalent of a power bar for long hours at work. Definite way to cheer your co-workers.

I think I need to turn my thoughts to higher things. But as if the economy wasn't depressing enough, now there's just all this swine flu business. Though I did have a good laugh yesterday watching BBC News. The tags at the bottom of the screen read:

BREAKING NEWS

Sturgeon: All steps being taken to deal with pandemic [or something like that]

It took me a while to realise they meant Health Sec Nicola Sturgeon, not that someone had mistyped Surgeon General or something. Still, the image of a fish speaking kept me entertained for a while. 

Doesn't take much on maternity leave.