To complement the walk I led last Sunday (and, coincidentally, wrote about in my previous post), I decided to do some baking, as it was very much appreciated by a large group on another walk in April.
I’d never baked brownies before and so, I fancied having ago…
Of course, what you see in the first photo is not a big lump of condensed cocoa power and the rest! Because my first attempt at baking something for the group was to create these chocolate chip and vanilla muffins – which, I must admit, turned out much larger than I’d expected… Had I know there would only have been seven of us on the day, I might have taken the first dozen with me on the day. But I wanted to be prepared in case I was going to have to entertain another group of twenty.
In short: I would’ve had to have carried two containers of muffins, inside a backpack that already held my lunchbox, a hydration bladder and a flask of tea among other things!
So, I decided to downside and to try baking brownies (because everyone loves chocolate, right?) – for those of you wondering; in spite of the blackness on top, the muffins did not taste anything like charcoal! ;-)
So, after much browsing, I settled upon this recipe for the brownies, as I had most of the ingredients in stock.
I purposefully bought a tin of ‘Lighter than Light‘ mayonnaise for this one (it’s a recipe that supposedly contains reduced fat) and since I didn’t spy any buttermilk in Lidl (and couldn’t be bothered to head elsewhere), I decided to try and create my own substitute, using one cup of milk and a teaspoon of lemon juice; allowing it to sit for a good ten-minutes (this was one of several suggestions discovered during a Google search).
It came out of the halogen oven round (and very much like a cake) because I currently only have two round cake tins, along with a rectangular loaf tin that I’m sure would’ve been too deep. Do I really need to add to my collection of bakeware?
It cut this cake in to quarters, packed it away and then divided it again on the walk to share amongst us all. I haven’t tasted a brownie for the best part of a year but these were a bit soft (in the middle of Wiltshire…) but in spite of the surprise ingredients, I for one was satisfied with the taste.
To end this post, we have a picture of some coconut shortbread I made a few weeks ago:
This was actually formed in my 2lb loaf tin. All I’m going to say is that it tasted fine! :-)
Thanks for reading and happy baking!
