The best chocolate brownie recipe in the world

I've just reached the half way point in LOTR - finished book 3 of 6. Still interested, but I don't really have anything more to say about it so far. Except, that I'm admiring the way that Tolkien, on a regular basis, seems to have thought "Hmm - story needs moving along. I know! I'll bring in a character who can carry them and cover vast distances with one step." This device could have been useful in the last Harry Potter!

Anyway - so it was Martin's birthday this week, and rather than making him a birthday cake as such, I decided to make triple chocolate brownies. This is a recipe I came across in Delicious magazine in 2008, and it truly is the best chocolate brownie recipe ever. It justified a year's subscription all by itself (not that I paid for it - thank you Susan :-) )!

It's so good that I thought I'd share it - and it can really easily be made gluten free without tasting any different.

So, you will need:

150g unsalted butter

200g plain chocolate, broken into squares

175g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 large eggs

75g plain flour, sifted (replace this with gluten-free flour for the g-f version, I used Dove Farm)

100g white chocolate, cut into 5mm - 1cm chunks

100g milk chocolate, cut into 5mm - 1cm chunks.

Preheat the oven to 160 C/140 c fan/gas 3 - adjust accordingly if your oven is fierce as you really don't want to overcook these.

Grease & line the base and 2 sides of a 20cm square cake tin with 1 piece of baking paper, which makes it easier to lift out of the tin.

Place the plain chocolate & butter in a large heatproof bowl set over a pan of gently simmering water and melt, stirring occasionally - I've discovered that the chocolate melts loads quicker than the butter, so chop the butter up if you want to speed up the process. Remove the bowl from the pan once melted and cool slightly.

Using electric beaters, beat the caster sugar and vanilla into the chocolate mixture. Whisk in theeggs, one at a time, until well combined. Add flour and beat until the mixture is smooth.

Stir in the white & milk chocolate chunks.

Pour into tin and bake for 30 mins or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the brownie comes out with a few moist crumbs (I tend to undercook it by 3 or 4 minutes so it is still gooier than this when it comes out - it then isn't very structurally sound but it is ammmmmmmmmmazing.)

Allow to cool completely in the tin before lifting out and cutting into squares.

Try and restrain yourself or anyone else in the house from eating them all at one sitting, and don't think about the calorie count.

Once you have melted the chocolate & butter it is really easy, and genuinely the best brownies I've ever had. I suppose you could add nuts if you wanted to, but I feel that nuts in a cake spoil a perfectly good cake! As it is, it's pretty allergy friendly.

Have fun :-)

Right, back to Lord of the Rings next time, but we're off to Knaresborough today to enjoy the sunshine!