Easy Bournville Brownies

These brownies, made with dark chocolate and cocoa taste even better the day after they are baked
Photo: Sriram Narayanan 

What dessert comes to you easily when you have barely enough time to put together a three-course dinner for a few friends after a busy workday? There is a dish in every home cook’s repertoire that has been committed to memory and which the cook can recreate effortlessly at any time as long as all the ingredients are at hand. 

In my case, it is dark chocolate brownies, which I serve with a good ice cream.

A few days ago, I baked these brownies from scratch for dessert and served them with a store-bought mocha ice cream, when I had around two hours before a dear friend came home to dinner; other things on the menu that night were a marinated prawn appetiser, chicken curry and rice.

Contrary to what you may think, it is not difficult to make this dessert even as a last minute addition to a special meal involving more than two courses. Of course, a little bit of planning and grocery shopping go a long way in helping you do this. 

Assembling the brownie ingredients does not take too long, since I try to eliminate the process of measuring ingredients as much as possible when I am rushed. I prefer to make do with whatever packaged quantities I have at hand, and leave the rest to that ubiquitous Indian cooking trait called andaaz (roughly translated as ‘estimation’). 

As for the Bournville part, I was far too rushed during my after-office grocery run, and could not find the usual dark cooking chocolate that I use for this recipe. So I popped a couple of large bars of ‘Rich Cocoa’ Cadbury Bournville chocolate into my shopping cart. 

Moreover, as it turned out, the Bournville made the brownies even better; gooey and squidgy with a crackly crust and a dense bite. Overall, a quick dessert that took 15 minutes to gather and blend ingredients, and 25 minutes to bake.

Easy Bournville Brownies

Ingredients

2x80 gm bars and 1x33 gm bar Bournville 'Rich Cocoa' chocolate
1 packet (100 gm) Amul Butter
70 gm cocoa
60 gm flour
130 gm caster sugar
3 eggs

Method

Preheat your oven to 180 degree C. Line an aluminium, square baking tin (6.5 x 6.5 inches or 7.5 x 7.5 inches) with parchment paper.

Melt the chocolate in a microwave proof bowl to a smooth consistency. Add softened butter and set aside. Mix sugar, cocoa and flour well, and set aside. Fold in the dry ingredients into the butter-chocolate mixture. Finally add the eggs, one by one, beating well after each addition.

Pour brownie batter into baking tin and pop into the oven for around 25 minutes. A toothpick/knife inserted into the brownies at this point should have sticky batter on it.

Cool for a few minutes before cutting into squares. Makes 9 thick brownies in the small tin, or 12 thin brownies in the larger tin. 

You can serve the brownies warm by themselves, or with a good vanilla, or coffee ice cream.