Little Box Brownie

A Baking Blog from Melbourne, Australia

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Sugar + Cream

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Caramel, just sugar and cream, its irresistible! Especially when combined with my all time favourite food, Chocolate. This has to be the ultimate in sweet flavour combinations. This week has been a sugar overload to say the least.
First I made a chocolate mud cake, filled it with cream and molten caramel, then drizzled it with a chocolate ganache. 
The Chocolate mud cake recipe is one I came up with for a cook book that I have on the drawing cards. So one day when I find someone to publish it you can have the recipe or maybe email me and I could be persuaded to pass it on. The caramel recipe on the other hand you will find below. All the recipes are from the same recipe just more cream was added to thin it out.

Caramel Sauce

1 1/2 cups of sugar
50ml water
60ml cream
60ml golden syrup
125g butter

Place the sugar and water into a saucepan on a medium heat, stir until the sugar dissolves and it starts to boil. Let it boil until the syrup turns a golden colour. Then remove from the heat and stir in the cream, golden syrup and butter. Be careful not to burn yourself as the mixture will bubble up and let off steam. Use the caramel anyway you like I have given a few examples. 

I had some caramel sauce left over from the cake so put it in the fridge.  Once it had harden I removed it and rolled the caramel into balls. I melted some chocolate in the microwave and dropped the caramels into the chocolate and rolled them through until well coated. I used a small spoon to retrieve them and placed them on a tray to set. Perfect little treats to use any left over sauce. 
This Brownie recipe is from the fat witch cookbook, I wrote about fat witch brownies in another post. I have modified the recipe slightly and used the caramel sauce above instead of caramel lollies like the recipe suggests. I have to say the caramel sauce made these brownies truly delicious. The caramel sinks to the bottom and creates a soft chewy base. It does make them harder to remove from the tin however worth the extra effort for the taste. These brownies made a really luscious desert when you have guests, if you reserve some of the caramel sauce and pour over the top and add lashings of cream. Or alternatively great with a cuppa on their own.
Fat Witch Brownies

160g butter
1/2 cup dark chocolate
3 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla
1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 cup of the caramel sauce from above

Pre heat the oven to 160C

Place the butter and sugar into a saucepan and heat on a medium temperature until they melt and combine. Set aside to cool slightly.

Place the eggs, sugar and vanilla into a bowl and beat until combine. Then sift in the flour and pour in the chocolate mixture. Stir until combine. Pour into a 20x30cm tin, lined with baking paper!!!! I can’t stress that enough, you have to line it. Then pour the caramel sauce over the top, which you may need to heat slightly if it has cooled to get it to a pouring consistency. Place in the oven and cook for 35minutes.

This recipe is from ‘Fat Witch Brownies’ cookbook, with a few little changes due to my inability to follow a recipe to the tee. If you want the real recipe you should check out her book. 

Brownie #1

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My hunt for the perfect brownie began after a trip to New York City, where I was fortunate to stumble across a little brownie shop in the middle of the Chelsea markets “The Fat Witch”, go on check them out. Whenever a family member or friend travels to New York I make sure they seek out this famous brownie shop and try the delights for themselves and of course return with a goodie bag for me. The last person to visit was my little sister. New York was the first place she went to on her two month holiday so unfortunately she was unable to bring back my favorite brownie ‘the caramel fat witch’. So instead she brought me a packet mixture of their blondies, which I have been saving for the perfect moment.
Since my trip to New York, whenever I find a brownie recipe in a cook book or magazine I have to buy it. So I have now decided that I will cook and photography as many of these recipes as humanly possible and record my feed back, so that you too will find the perfect brownie recipe or we will get fat trying. I mean there all pretty good aren’t they??
This brownie recipe comes from the book “Popina book of baking”, in the book they are called truffle brownies. The texture is more cake like to look at. If you taste them straight from the oven they taste more like a cake. However if you wait till they cool and even leave them over night (not so easy, I know), the taste and texture becomes like a chocolate truffle. The kind that melt in your mouth, and becomes so irresistible that you have to go in for seconds and thirds and perhaps fourths. I would say this is one really good brownie. 
In this recipe I have used raw sugar, the kind you make a coffee with, and the chocolate is a mixture of dark and milk to make up the volume.

 Chocolate Truffle Brownies

240g chocolate
100g butter
3 eggs
125g sugar
50g flour
Pre heat oven to 150degrees.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a saucepan until they combine. 
In a separate bowl whisk the eggs and sugar together until they become light and fluffy. Add the flour and stir to combine. While stirring add the chocolate and butter mixture, mix until all the ingredients are combined. Pour into a lined 20cm square cake tin and bake for 20minutes or until cooked.

Sour Dough

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Two days ago I started to make some bread, which I was going to have for dinner. I quite often make bread which I stuff with spinach and feta, however after a few hours and the dough had not risen, I thought my yeast must have died, so had something else altogether.
I never got around to throwing the dough out and the next day it had risen. Unfortunately I left the dough for a few days as I didn’t get time to cook it, by the time I did the dough had a bit of a sour smell to it. Oh well I thought it might just taste like a sour dough instead. I made a big loaf and had it with some pasta. That way I still had the pasta if the bread had gone bad. Well it turn out really well, it had a slight sour dough taste but not all that strong it was especially good smothered in butter . There is nothing more satisfying that bread and butter, except of course if its served with a big bowl of pasta. 
This pasta recipe is my sisters, she doesn’t cook much, but when she does she creates a pretty good meal.
It tastes like a restaurant dish and is pretty easy and relatively cheap to cook. Its definitely my new go to dish.
Pasta
Sour Dough

Bread 

600g flour
13 g fresh yeast
300 ml water
20ml olive oil
20ml milk
15 g salt

pre heat oven to 180 

Put all of the ingredients into your electric mixer with the dough hook attached, mix on a low setting until the mixture is combined, then increase the speed and mix for 5-10 minutes, or until the dough comes away from the bowl.

Place the dough in a bowl and leave to rise for 1 hour, punch down then leave again. I left mine for a day which created the sour taste however you can bake after a hour.

Remove the dough from the bowl on to a floured surface, shape and bake. 

Pasta Leftovers
Pasta

half a packet of store brought dry fettuccine 
4 rashers of bacon
1 cup of mushrooms
3 tomatos
half a tup of Philadelphia cooking cream
Salt/pepper to taste
italian herbs
Place the fettuccine in a saucepan of boiling salted water and cook until el dente.
To make the sauce, chop the bacon, mush rooms and tomatoes up into bite size pieces.  
Place the bacon and mushrooms in a frypan with a little olive oil and cook until golden. Stir through the tomatoes and cook until they soften. Add the phili, italian herbs and salt and pepper.
Strain the pasta and and toss through the sauce.

Serve with a nice red and some chunky bread and make a meal of it.