Caramel brownie squares.

I just discovered how a caramel brownies dough tastes like... Peanut butter!

It looked like this, but in a darker shade.

Recipe by Brownies, Fudges & Toppings.

Ingredients:
60g self-raising flour
40g plain flour
150g butter, melted
230g firmly packed soft brown sugar (I used 170), plus extra for topping
2 eggs
1 tbsp milk (omitted)
1 tsp vanilla essence
75g walnut halves, chopped (I used 30g ground hazelnut, just what the kitchen was left with)

1. Preheat oven to 180°C.
2. Sift together the flours. Beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl until light and creamy, then add one egg, beat well. Mix thoroughly with one tablespoon of the flours.
3. Beat in the second egg, vanilla essence and milk. Fold in the remaining flour and 50g of the walnuts.
4. Spoon in the mixture to the tin and scatter the top with the remaining walnuts and sugar.
5. Bake for 35-40 minutes.

My trusty chocolate brownie recipe.

 

Some things appear in our lives and immediately became what make us proud of.  There could never be regrets and what hold us to these little things in life are the great memories where they played their role.

Including this recipe of brownie from the book mentioned here.

I would be reluctant to describe the story of returning the book, but it was never under my possession.  Back then I was a little baker who gets fascinated easily by magnificent photographs (and I cursed as I tasted the first awful steak in my life, placing all the blame on a Japanese TV drama I once caught up with); with that humongous love for Victoria cakes the book got my attention for days.

Mommy was unwilling to buy that book of recipes for me; she said she's spent a large sum of cash on my baking experiments.

So who did the buying?  Of course the closest person in my life.  Back then.

When the break up took place and regrets flooded me with stinging, bitter flashbacks, my mom asked me encouraging to ditch away everything that can connect me to the past; including the books.  This book was the one I clung onto the most, apart from every plushie which once had their very own spot on my bed.

The relation I had with its brownie recipe was absolutely deep.

There was this birthday of three Choral Speaking members, and I actually prepared a cake for them as we bonded really tightly over the past few months.  This was the recipe I had chosen, and the cake was unsightly; furthermore I didn't have the appropriate box to fill it in, so I brought over a huge utensil to cover it up.

But after everyone had their first bite, their praises immediately turned genuine.  Or at least I thought so.  (Anyways, if anyone baked me a cake I would have said it's lovely - and that's true from the bottom of my heart.)

I guess it's the key ingredient that matters...

Chocolate, baking chocolate. You get a big chunk of it at a reasonable price.  To tell you the truth, the taste did not differ if you tried using the local made and the foreign brand, I usually go for the cheapest available.

That's not it.  This recipe calls for one big bar of chocolate.  Maybe a little extra.

For the recipe, I've edited the thing a lil' to fit into little pieces of paper for distribution among the members years ago.  I captured a photo of it just in case it'd be gone missing.

Adapted from Gorgeous Cakes by Annie Bell.

Don't bother with the words in the background.