Coffee Brownies (recipe from The Great American Bake-in by Patricia Lousada, a Sainsbury’s Cookbook, 1986)
A fine vicar’s wife I am, making the sweetest and most chocolate of brownies for the first Sunday in Lent. I think the good weather of Saturday must have fermented my brain and caused uncharacteristic light headedness (cleared away promptly by Monday morning’s all enveloping mist, which was fully fledged fog by Wednesday evening). I was not short of takers, however, and though I thought them to be a bit too coffeey and perhaps even too sweet, there were general mutterings of appreciation and requests for the recipe (a bit late in the week, I’m afraid Marigold). The primroses I just couldn’t resist and I even managed to get out of bed a bit earlier than usual to dash out into the garden to pick them – so desperate are we all for spring, for yellow, blue and incipient green.
75 g/3 oz butter
125 g/4 oz soft light brown sugar
75 g/ 3 oz soft dark brown sugar
1 heaped teasp instant coffee
1 teasp hot water (or coffee left over from the breakfast cafetière)
1 large or 2 small eggs
150 g/5oz SR flour
150 g/5oz plain chocolate cut into pea-size chunks
Preheat oven 180 degrees C/160 for a fan/350 degrees F/Gas Mark 4
Line an 8 inch/20 cm square tin with baking parchment
In a saucepan, gently heat the butter with the sugars, stirring until the butter melts. Dissolve the instant coffee in the water (or left over cafetière coffee) and add this to the mixture. Remove the pan from the heat and set on one side until the mixture is lukewarm, at which point whisk the egg in. Sift in the flour a bit at a time, stirring as you go. Add the chocolate pieces.
Turn the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 35-40 minutes. Don’t worry if things look a bit underdone at this point, as it is better if the brownies are moist and chewy. Leave in the tin for 10 minutes and then cut into squares before putting to cool on a wire rack. (The good thing about using baking parchment is that you can lift the whole thing out in one after cutting the cake into squares. Then let them cool on the parchment and give them a final cut when they have firmed up a bit.)
I added half the ingredients again ( and used a bigger baking tray) to make enough for both churches.
A small rant:In last Sunday’s Sunday Times, AA Gill (often a brilliant writer with a knack for a clever phrase) was incredibly rude about Mary Berry – indeed about the whole idea of baking. Cooking is apparently fine “I have taught all my children to cook, but never, ever to bake” . Well whoosh go the bread and baked potatoes then. I shall not repeat the unkind things he says about Mary personally which I would have hoped even a television critic might have grown out of needing to say. But on he goes. “Of all the kitchen skills, baking is the broadest metaphor for a thwarted and repressed existence – and it’s almost inevitably a woman who will make things rise with a lightness that belies the tension, precision and frustration of their construction. They add heat and ice and all their unused creativity, then present it to some man, who will shovel it into his face. And with any luck, it will kill him.” To this I make my response.
Coffee brownies in spring sunshine (8.45 am Sunday 9 March 2014)
For me the heart of the matter is that many of us bake , not for ourselves but to share. Whereas my mother would have baked cakes regularly and there was always a cake – usually a madeira – in a tin in the pantry, I only bake if I know people are coming for tea (and possibly for coffee) or when I make biscuits or brownies for church. They are treats, to be had little and not often. I am in control of the quality of my ingredients which are either cupboard staples or fresh.I use eggs and perhaps more importantly butter (no trans fat – although on the odd occasion I admit to using margarine). More often than not I use wholemeal flour or a mixture of wholemeal and white, ditto for sugar. I never add salt. People prefer little bites, so everything I make ends up being of petits fours size. Many people have rushed to church – a 9.30 am service on a Sunday morning can seem jolly early, especially if you live a few miles away – and often I think breakfast has not been a priority. A proper cup of real coffee and something small and delicious is the least the church can do to restore blood sugar levels and a modicum of physical well being. Further, there’s nothing more welcoming to unwitting visitors or to brave souls wondering if our church is for them than a sweet little something that someone has gone to the bother of making. Hooray for baking. As I hit the publish button, the sun came out for the first time today (4.45pm) – I’ll take that as a vote of support.
7 Comments
Hooray for baking, indeed!
I agree wholeheartedly with your comments about baking. It is a wonderful tradition which allows for a great deal of creative expression within a relatively small budget of time and money. It brings pleasure to the fortunate recipients, who appreciate the effort made on their behalf (as well as the delicious results); and also the baker, who has the satisfaction of having performed a small service for his fellow man (and seen every last crumb enjoyed).
Fran
The point you make about the relatively small outlay of time and money for the pleasure it brings is absolutely right. You are right too about the tradition. I have a step daughter-in-law who is Chinese. They have no tradition of baking, and – if I remember rightly – few people have, or had, ovens. She was much taken with the idea of baking when she came to live in this country and has taken baking equipment back to China when she visited (so perhaps ovens are more common now). Thanks for raising these points.
Mary you are so right to defend baking . I agree that AA Gill is a clever chap but spiteful remarks never reflect well on the speaker and Mary Berry of all people to be criticised seems particularly unfair. Perhaps AA ‘s blood sugar was a little low that day and he would have benefitted from a cup of tea and a little something sweet before sitting down at the computer?
I think you might be right – condemning all baking seems a little extreme and rather daft. A friend who is a journalist tries to hold in mind ‘not unkind; not untrue’ which is not a bad rule of life for those of us who are not journalists either.
Thank you Mary for the recipe for the delicious coffee brownies. The recipe sounds really good.
One of my favourite recipe books (The Dinner Party Book – plan ahead for Easy Entertaining) is
by Patricia Lousada. I plan to make these when we have our grandson to stay next week, as
he is always starving when he arrives from the school bus!
Yes, I remember her being much more of a household name a few years ago. Thanks for your kind comment, Marigold. Your grandson must have very sophisticated taste to like coffee at his age – so many children don’t.
You are so right about needing a little bite after church! Here in the US I supervised a ‘Sunday School’ that is, religious education classes held on Sunday mornings for some years, and taught for 13 consecutive years. My whole family are also bell ringers, and some have been singers and dancers in the children’s programs: since 1993 Sunday mornings have required us to be at church by 9am at the latest – sometimes as early as 7:45. Without the little bites that are routinely offered after the service (at 11 am) and often before, for those coming early to do the work and rehearsing, church might have fallen by the wayside. Carry on baking and take no notice of those who cannot imagine a life different from their own.
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[…] quite sunny, it has been jolly cold – especially in the evenings. So I went back to check my blog for 13 March last year (a year to the day!) and guess what, the church biscuit (actually coffee brownies) is decorated […]