3-ingredient Brownie OR How-To-Cheat-at-Baking

I can’t actually remember where we stumbled on the original recipe for these, so if anyone knows, please give me a shout.

We tweaked it a bit until it was as quick an easy as possible. These measurements work for us but you may want to tweak it further to your own personal taste.

Essentially, it is some sort of hybrid between a brownie, a cake and a fondant; and in terms of number of ingredients & taste & look (i.e. it can actually pass as a ‘real’ cake or puddingy dessert) it beats our previous quick fix chocolate mug cake recipe hands down. Yes, it takes slightly longer but really, if you were making individual mug cakes for more than two of you; it’s about the same. Plus, whilst you make not want to plonk down a microwave mug cake at the end of a dinner party; you could totally get away with serving this!

1. Preheat oven to 180C / 350F / Gas Mark 5
2. Grab a 400g jar of chocolate spread, some plain flour & 2 eggs
3. 3. Put between 3/4 & 1 cup of flour in the bowl (around 100-125g)

I used 1 full cup this time and felt it could have done with a little less.

4. Add 2 eggs. Just crack them straight in, there’s no need to pre-beat.

5. Scoop out the contents of the jar. (Go on, lick the spoon, no-one will know)

6. Whisk it together. It doesn’t have to be smooth.

7. Spread it into a baking tin.

At this point I thought “Hey, ya know what might work???”

…so I stirred in a good sprinkle of freeze-dried raspberries…
I know! It’s breaking the rules & I’m now making 4-ingredient brownies. But, Hey; that’s how I roll.

8. (or 9. depending on whether you cheated too). Pop in the oven for 15-18 minutes. 15 if you’ve spread it out in a long tray, nearer 20 if it’s in a smaller one, and therefore thicker.

A skewer inserted in the middle should come out cleanish

This was mine after 20 minutes. It was still pretty wet at 15, but i wish i had taken it out at 18.

Allow to cool before cutting into slices (if you can!)

VARIATIONS: 

• Try different flavours of choc spread. We usually use chocolate hazelnut; but you could try chocolate orange, chocolate caramel, white chocolate…

Or try adding a handful of :

• Chocolate chips
• Nuts
• Dried fruit
• Fudge pieces
• Freeze-dried raspberry/ strawberry
• Mini Marshmallows

CONFESSION TIME:

This is going to sound like such a cop-out, but we actually used this as Birthday Cake recently! Teen2 was in a play at our local Repertory Theatre the night before & night of his 16th birthday, which fell on a Saturday. We were going out for a family meal at a Chinese buffet restaurant in the afternoon, he was planning on taking cake-cake for pre-show and was heading out for pizza with friends later; so the idea of baking another ‘proper’ cake for during the day seemed kinda silly. I made one of these, dusted it with cocoa & icing sugar, and we used that. It was amazing!! It was just nicely gooey in the centre and actually felt quite decadent served with a dollop of cream!