Walnut topped Chocolate Brownies

Desserts – my children love to end their dinner always with a dessert.  They do not necessarily want a starter or even a main meal, but a dessert is always a must after dinner.  Not necessarily always to be a pudding or a cake – they content themselves even with a small chocolate as long as it is designated “dessert” and is “sweet”.  I have a very small electric oven in the kitchen, so anything I bake has to be minuscule in size – 4 portions mostly so no chance of a second serving in case all four of us at home like the dessert and are not ready to share.  When it comes to dessert, at home we can be very selfish and really fight over it – all of us have a sweet tooth.  I do sometimes forgo my dessert if I husband wants my share and uses mean means like reminding me of my weight to get it from me.  I have been promised a bigger oven once we renovate the kitchen – but that can be a few years away. 

I have seen many brownie recipes, but the one below is quite quick to prepare and since the butter is more, it is quite moist and creamy.  I also top it with a lot of walnuts which is a good source of proteins.  One of my colleagues once mentioned, “A dessert is really tasty when you feel you have sinned when you eat it.”  Now I would not say I thought I sinned when I ate this brownie, but I did feel guilty after a generous serving.  But then again, it is not that I feel guilty everyday.

Preparation Time: 50 minutes

Serves: 6

Ingredients:

250 grams all purpose

2 eggs

250 grams castor sugar

250 grams unsalted butter

A pinch of salt

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

2 tablespoon cocoa powder

2 tablespoon broken walnut bits

1 tablespoon milk (if needed)

Method:

1. Beat the butter, sugar, eggs till soft.  
2. Add the salt, vanilla essence and cocoa powder and beat further till creamy.  
3. Add the flour and mix well.  
4. If the mixture is too thick, add a tablespoon of milk.  
5. Pour the mixture into a buttered and floured cake tin and sprinkle the broken walnut bits on top.  
6. Bake for 40 minutes on 180 degrees C.  Serve warm or cold.

Chocolate Walnut Pudding

With the New Year just gone by, the one thing you hear everywhere, and these days see it on the statuses of several of your "on line friends" is about their new year resolutions.  And of course if you have record of their previous years resolution, you will see it is almost the same.  Which goes to show us that the old resolution failed and this is the 2nd, 3rd or in some instances even the 4th attempt at making it successful. But does this qualify us to be failures or just very resilient?  

I am guessing the top New Year resolutions of all time would have something to do with loosing weight (at least that is what I choose every year...and still am resilient about it to choose it yet again), maybe for many quitting smoking and for many others spending more time with the family. Personally, I have stopped making resolutions publicly.  The one secret resolution I always have and never accomplish is to loose weight - but then, when you love to cook, you are bound to eat what you make and hence very difficult to accomplish this resolution.  Perhaps I should resolve to exercise everyday - and then automatically I would have the resolution of loosing weight too accomplished...that seems better.  But on second thoughts, maybe resolve to exercise every other day seems more realistic.  And definitely the below recipe is no help in getting anywhere close to getting my weight down - chocolate puddings being my weak point after all. 

Mixed flours

Preparation Time: 1 hour

Serves 6

Ingredients:

 1 cup sifted flour

2 tablespoon cocoa powder

2 teaspoon baking powder

¾ cup granulated sugar

½ teaspoon  salt

½ cup semi skimmed milk

Roasted Walnuts

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

2 tablespoons melted butter

1 cup broken walnuts

¾ cup brown sugar

¼ cup cocoa powder

1 cup hot water

Method:

1. Sift together flour, baking powder, granulated sugar, 2 tablespoons cocoa and salt.  
2. Add milk, butter and vanilla essence to the mixture above.  
3. Roast the nuts till brown in colour.  Mix them into the above mixture.  
4. Pour into greased cake pan.  
5. Mix the brown sugar and the ¼ cup cocoa.  
6. Sprinkle over the batter in the pan.  
7. Pour hot water over the entire batter evenly.  
8. Bake in a pre heated oven (180 degrees C) for 45 minutes.

Hot water on the pudding

Sprinkled cocoa & sugar