Reciepies That Keep On Giving – Part One: Stovetop Magic Brownies

One of the things I’m really excited about branching out into with this blog is recipes. I love to cook, and loved to do so before it was trendy. Ok, that was a hipster moment, but I’m willing to deal with that because this is 100% truthful. Watching Junior MasterChef with my housemate, Virginia Boots, I can’t help but be a little put out that cooking is now what all the cool kids are doing. Cooking is what I used to do all weekend, every weekend, when I was small, and it certainly wasn’t cool. Often, it was with Mama-K, but other times, it was by myself, mucking around with flour and sugar and butter. I guess that’s a point of difference between my childhood cooking and the childhood cooking depicted on Junior MasterChef – no expensive or flashy ingredients, but lots of good, honest, floury fun.

And in the spirit of good, honest, floury fun without expensive or flashy ingredients, here’s my first recipe in my series of Recipes That Keep On Giving – Stovetop Magic Brownies. My idea about posting the occasional Recipe That Keeps On Giving is a chance to showcase some of my favorite and most frequently cooked things. Not because they are the fanciest, but because they are the easiest, most economical, are always well received, adjust up and down to feed a crowd or just yourself, and, more often than not, freeze, defrost and transport beautifully. They’re kind of my kitchen’s best and fairest players.

This brownie recipe is fairly new to my regular rotation, but it certainly meets all the criteria for a Recipe That Keeps On Giving. Having played with other brownie recipes and not being particularly happy with the results, especially when the outlay on ingredients is taken into account, I was very pleased with the results this recipe yielded with minimal effort or expenditure. Originally, it came from ‘She’s Leaving Home’, lovely cookbook by Monica Tapapgia (AKA, Monica From Playschool, if you grew up in the 90s like I did…). However, I’ve simplified the methodology, and adjust a few ingredients – enough so that I feel justified in changing the recipe’s name. I call these Stovetop Magic Brownies because all the mixing is done in a single large saucepan, on the stovetop, and they are magical because…THEY DON’T CONTAIN ANY ACTUAL CHOCOLATE ! Although I’ve had arguments with The Dreamboat and his housemate, Jordan Hawthorne, about whether cocoa powder, a principal ingredient in this recipe, counts as ‘chocolate’ or not – I maintain it doesn’t, Jordan and Dreamboat maintain it does – what we can all agree on is that these brownies are amongst the richest, moistest, and chocolatiest we’ve ever tasted, semantics aside.




Stovetop Magic Brownies

Makes approximately 24 medium brownies, depending on how you slice it.

350g Salted Butter
140g Cocoa
675g (yep) White Sugar
6 Eggs
250g Plain Flour
3 Tablespoons (yep) Vanilla Extract
200g Chopped Nuts (Although I never really bother…)
1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius. Line a lamington tray, or other largish, deep sided, square or rectangular dish with baking paper, or grease generously with butter. This temp might seem quite low for brownies – it is indeed, and it’s one of the variations I made on the original recipe. I’ve found, at the suggestion of Sam from Amore Cakes’ cookbook (check out her brilliant chocolate almond cake next time you’re at the Epic farmer’s markets!) that all manner of things have a better taste and consistency when cooked at a lower temperature for a slightly longer time, these brownies being no exception.
2. In a large saucepan, begin melting the butter over medium heat. When your butter is about half melted, add in your cocoa powder, and stir occasionally with a wooden spoon, being careful not to let the cocoa/butter mixture burn, until almost all the butter is melted and the mixture is dark and glossy.
3. Turn off stove, but leave saucepan on the element to make good use of the radiant heat. Add in the sugar, and stir until thoroughly combined. I like to add the sugar whilst the mixture is quite warm, as it seems to help it integrate into the mixture more quickly.
4. Now, add in your eggs. At this point I like to switch to a balloon whisk, but I’ll leave the choice of weapon to you. Mix until smooth. Stir in the vanilla essence.
5. Finally, carefully add the flour (and nuts, if you are using them), bit by bit, so that you don’t have too many flour splashes to clean up.
6. When everything is incorporated, pour mixture into your prepared tray, and let it settle out. I never bother trying to make a groove in the middle with the back of a spoon to ensure even rising, but if you would like to do that, you can. I’ll just judge you from afar.
7. Bake for approximately 40 minutes, or, more importantly, until the middle of the brownie doesn’t smooch in when you touch it.
8. Slice brownie in the tin about ten minutes after cooling and dust with extra cocoa or icing sugar, if that takes your fancy. Leave the brownie in the tin until entirely cold, if at all possible, to get the best and moistest result.

And there you have it. Last week, I made a triplicate batch of these for my first years, to celebrate the last tutorial of semester. Needless to say, they soothed the pain of talking about exams no end. Ah, the devine power of a Stovetop Magic Brownie. I think this rather bad photo captures how I feel about them…