In Principio there were Raspberry Brownies

Um. Hi! Pleased to meet you.

I've been wanting to start one of these things for several months and am just now brave (and avoiding writing with enough intensity) to give it a go. So here we are.

The purpose of this blog is to share recipes for food which fits, in terms of cost and ease of preparation, into the life of a PhD Candidate. It may also support occasional reflections about the academic life. Pictures of medieval buildings, cute puppies, and my knitting will probably appear as well, even though I suck at photography.

But have a picture of some delicious brownies anyway:

I made these this afternoon because I was waiting for lunch to cool down enough to eat. I had raspberries from the reduced price section of Morrisons and they sat in my fridge for several days while I was too busy to use them up. Enter this afternoon, when I had time on my hands, and was looking for recipes for muffins. The muffin idea got scrapped after I saw the BBC Good Food recipe for raspberry brownies. Here is my version, I hope you enjoy!

Raspberry Brownies

(adapted from BBC Good Food, original recipe here)

300g semi-sweet chocolate chips*

250g Butter

220g light brown sugar

4 large eggs

50g cocoa powder

140g plain flour

200g raspberries (or thereabouts, I didn't measure mine)

Heat oven to 200C. Put the chocolate, butter, and sugar in a medium-size pot on the stovetop. Melt over medium heat, stirring, until everything is smooth. Take it off the hob.

While that's cooling, find your 8x8x2.5 inch square baking dish and grease it. Add the four eggs to the chocolate mixture, stirring after each. In a small bowl, weight out the cocoa and flour. Stir into the liquid stuff. Pour into a square glass baking dish and sprinkle the raspberries over. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until it feels set. You test whether it's done with a toothpick in if you want (it should come out clean) but aim for the parts without fruit because they're going to stay damp.

Let cool and then cut into small squares.

Makes 16 brownies

*I used these because they were what I had. Use whatever chocolate you have and it'll work out fine.