On the small cul-de-sac where I live my chocolate brownies are legendary. It started with a Christmas do at a neighbour’s house a couple of years ago, and they asked each house to bring some food, so my family delegated that I make a batch of my chocolate brownies.

Needless to say they went down extremely well and since then I have been the go to person whenever someone is after cakes to sell as they always sell out!

I was first given a chocolate brownie recipe by one of the librarians at my sixth form college, since then I’ve looked at other recipes and adapted my own recipe to find one that works every time.

And I’m going to share it with you.

Rachel’s Chocolate Brownies

Ingredients
400g Bournville Chocolate (or any dark chocolate with a high cocoa percentage, I just like to go local)
90g Plain Flour
100g Caster Sugar
1 tbsp Cocoa Powder
90g Butter/Margarine (Stork will do)
3 tbsp Golden Syrup
2 large Eggs
A drop of Vanilla Essence (I’m all for technical measurements)

Method
1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4
2. Line a baking tin, pick the size depending on how thick you want the brownies to be, with either baking paper or soft butter
3. Break up and melt the chocolate in a bowl over boiling water/in the microwave/however you want to do it
4. Stir together the dry ingredients into a separate bowl
5. Once the chocolate is melted, take it off the heat and add the butter, mixing together thoroughly
6. Then add the syrup, eggs and vanilla essence and mix
7. Combine the dry ingredients with the chocolate mixture and stir quickly until smooth
8. Pour the mixture into the baking tin, shaking gently so that it is evenly spread out
9. Put in the oven for 30-45 minutes until the edges are crispy, the middle will still be fairly gooey
10. Take the tin out of the oven and allow to cool for a few hours before cutting up into pieces

Serving Suggestion
I like to eat them cold as a snack or warm with some ice cream and chocolate sauce, they taste good however!