The Measure-Stir-and-Bake Chocolate Chunk cookies

I must apologise for being distracted from my bread making experiments. I was also busy making a Lightning McQueen cake and Disney cars cupcakes for my son's birthday. I will be flat-out this week as I will be attending a course at William Angliss Institute this weekend.

All I can bake now are these super-easy "Measure-Stir-and-Bake chocolate cookies". These cookies are so good that my husband and son just couldn't stop eating.

As mentioned in its name, these cookies are truly - measure, mix, stir and bake. I was "wicked" by replacing all the chocolate with the ones with higher cocoa content. At the same time, I was "nice" too by using the 25% fat reduced peanut butter and Alfa one rice bran spread instead of butter. For this combination, my freshly baked cookies have a nice surprising-soft texture. They were filled with semi-solid gooey high cocoa chocolate chunks with lots of melt-in-the-mouth effects...Yum!

 

 

Check out the gooey chocolate chunks...they are irresistible!

Here's the recipe from BBC GoodFood 101 Cakes and Bakes (with my modification in blue)

Make 12

300g dark chocolate (about 55% cocoa solid), broken into chunks (replaced with 70% cocoa solid dark chocolate)
100g milk chocolate, broken into chunks (replaced with 55% cocoa solid dark chocolate)
100g light muscovado sugar (replace with brown sugar)
85g butter, soften (replaced with Alfa one spread)
100g crunchy peanut butter (replaced with 25% fat reduced smooth peanut butter)
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
100g self-raising flour
100g large salted peanuts (replaced with 50g macadamia nuts)

Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Melt 100g of the dark chocolate. (I allow my melted chocolate cooled a little for about 15 min before stirring in other ingredient especially the egg.) Stir in sugar, butter, peanut butter, egg and vanilla and beat with a wooden spoon until well mixed. Stir in flour, all milk chocolate, nuts and half of the remaining dark chocolate. The mixture will be quite soft. Drop 12 big spoonfuls on 2-3 baking sheets, leaving room for the cookies to spread. Stick 2-3 pieces of the remaining dark chocolate in each cookie.
Bake for 10-12 min until they are slightly firm at the edges. These cookies will be soft in the middle but will crisp up as they cool. Cook longer for crisper cookies. Leave to cool for a few minutes, then transfer to wire rack to cool.

Happy Baking

Disney Cars cupcakes

These Disney cars cupcakes are part 2 of my son's 2nd Birthday celebration. I'm proud to say that the characters on the cupcakes are all cut, drawn and hand painted by me.

I love making these cupcakes and my ultimate accomplishment is to enjoy the kids' reaction to these cute little cupcakes...

Funny that the kids loves the Lightning McQueen and the King cupcakes but didn't want to touch the Chick cupcakes. This shows that everyone wants to be the "good guys" since young. The kids were observing the details of the character on their cupcakes and was eating them part by part. My son loves his lightning McQueen cupcake. He was holding on his cake so much that he didn't even want to bite it...I love my silly boy.

 

This is how I made these cupcakes...

The cupcakes are made with the same recipe that I made the Lightning McQueen cake. The recipe (with 3 eggs) makes 15 of the standard size cupcakes.

1. Colour rolled fondant with red, blue, green and black (tyres) edible coloring.
2. Roll out the coloured fondant into 3-4mm thick and cut into shapes.
3. Use small circle cookie cutter to cut black fondant into shapes of car tyres. Cut the red, green and blue fondant into the shapes of the cars characters. Fix 2 black tyres into each car.
4. Use edible writing pens (I used the Americolor Gourmet Writer Food Marker Pens) to draw the outline and feature of each car.
5. Painted the tyres and exhaust with edible silver and gold paint.
6. Allow the character to dry and firm up (this may take longer than a couple of hours depending on the humidity)
6. Combine 1 cup powdered sugar with 1 tbsp water and pipe around the edges of each digestive biscuit. Allow icing to set for 10-15 min. Thin icing with extra water until the right consistency and fill up the biscuit with the thinned icing. Place character icing onto the icing immediately. Allow icing to set.
7. Fix the biscuit into the cupcake using melted chocolate.
8. Sit back, relax and enjoy watching the kids eating these cupcakes.

Happy Baking

Brown sugar mini muffins and ... awards!

These cute little bite size muffins are so simple to bake and quick for eating. I took less than an hour to bake them and they are gone within seconds...

 

 

I must apologize for my extreme slow response with all the awards that I have received. I must admit that I've not been prompt enough for updating my blog. Comparing to my fellow bloggers, I'm have been too slow with my reading and response to comments. My apology for that.

Nevertheless, the following are the awards that I've received from my fellow bloggers. 

Jeannie, Baking Diary 

Jean, Noms I Must

Karen, Karen and Nigella

kitchen flavours

Rhondi, Big Mama's Home Kitchen

I wish that I can present these awards back to them because their blogs are really wonderful. In fact, I love all the blogs that I followed and would love to present these awards to all. However, rules are always rules and it's better to abide the rules for any reasons.

Here are the rules to abide in order to accept this award and they are:

1. Post linking back to the person that gave you the award
2. Share 7 random things about yourself
3. Award 15 blogs
4. Drop them a note and tell them about it.

Here's the 7 random things about me:

1. I'm a super-health-conscious person but love to eat anything with butter and sugar.

2. Less than a year ago, I've finally conquered my fear of driving which had been haunting me for years. My ultimate motivation is actually my son. 3 Cheers for my Mummy-Power!

3. My biggest 2011 resolution is to be able to run a half-marathon and I'm training very hard now for this day to happen.

4. I can never be sick of watching girly movies. My all-time favorite is The Devil Wears Prada. Love love love Anne Hathaway...

5. Shopping used to be my best loved hobby. Most of my friends think about me when they watched the movie, Confessions of a Shopaholic by Isla Fisher. Unfortunately, I didn't that much money to shop. So now, it is baking. LOL.

6. I love buying shoes but hate wearing heels and love wearing boots.

7. I'm a vege-person rather than a meat-eater but I have to tolerate two ferocious meat eaters at home (they are my husband and son) and have to cook meat to compromise all tastes.

And, here I am presenting these awards to 15 of my fellow bloggers...

A Hungry Spoon

Life given, eat well

My Kitchen in the Rockies

Mama with Flavour

Cinnamon Spice and Everything Nice

Life's too short to skip dessert

A Busy Gran's Kitchen

Sweet and Savory by Sarah

Sweet as Sugar Cookies

Kitchen Meditation

No-Frills Recipes

X3baking

A Duck's Oven

A girl, a dog & an oven

Anncoo Journal


Last but not not least, this is the muffin recipe from Daily Delicious  
(with my slight modification in blue)

Make 14 (I made 16 very mini ones)

110g Cake flour
1½ tsp Baking powder
60g Unsalted butter
50g Brown sugar
1 Egg
45g Crème Fraîche (replace with 60g milk)
½ tbsp Honey
A pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 170°C.
Line mini muffin pans with paper muffin cups.
Sift cake flour and baking powder together, set aside.
Beat butter, salt and sugar together until light in color, add the egg, beat to combine.
Pour the honey into the butter and beat to combine.
Add the flour to the butter in 3 parts, alternating with the Crème Fraîche (milk).
Divide the batter into prepared pans.
Bake for 15-17 minutes or golden and spring when touch lightly.
Let the muffin cool on a wire rack.

Happy Baking

Lightning McQueen cake

It has been a year ago when my baking journey begins...

It was Elmo and Cookie monster cupcakes for my child's one year old birthday cake that got me to be what I am today...

This Lightning McQueen cake is not flawless but is made with lots of love.

Happy 2nd Birthday, son! Mum made this cake for you.

The lightning McQueen cake pan that I used is from Wilton and it comes with concise baking and decoration instructions. I didn't like the idea of using instant cake mix or frosting mix as mentioned in the instructions. To me, using the instant mix wouldn't make any difference from buying the cake from any cake shops.

This is how I made this cake...

 

 

Here's the recipe that I used to make the Lightning McQueen cake base.

Devil's food cake from Australian Women Weekly Mini cookbook, Chocolate cakes 
(with my minor modification in blue)

Ingredients

180g unsalted butter, chopped
385g (1 3/4 cup) caster sugar
3 egg (lightly beaten)
225g (1 1/2 cup) self-raising flour
75g (1/2 cup) plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate soda (substitute with baking powder)
70g (2/3 cup) cocoa powder
3 tsp instant coffee powder (substitute with cocoa powder)
1/2 tsp red food coloring (I didn't add this)
125ml (1/2 cup) water
125ml (1/2 cup) milk

1. Preheat oven to 160°C (fan forced).
2. Grease cake pan with canola oil spray and set aside. (The recipe uses 2 x 20 cm round cake pans.)
3. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
4. Fold in sifted flours, soda (baking powder) and cocoa powder (with combined coffee powder and coloring), water and milk alternatively and in 2-3 batches.
5. Sift flour, cocoa powder, coffee powder, baking soda and salt into a separate bowl.
6. Pour mixture into prepared pans.
7. Bake for 45 min or until skewer comes out clean when inserted in center of cake.
8. Turn cake onto wire rack to cool.

This is what I did:
The amount of ingredients is increased by 1 1/3 time of the above recipe. 
All areas of the pan has to be filled evenly with this amount of batter and the excess might fall off the pan while baking. After the cake is removed from oven, cool the cake for 10 minutes. 
While the cake is still in the pan, carefully slice off the raised center portion of the cake. This allows the cake to sit more level and helps prevent cracking. 
To remove cake from pan, place cooling rack against cake and turn both cake rack and pan over. Lift pan off carefully. Cool cake at least one hour. Brush loose crumbs off cake and transfer cake to serving board.

The Wilton instruction uses shortening to make their buttercream which I think that it is a bad idea to feed my son and his little friends with this large amount of saturated fat. I know that butter is as bad but definitely better than shortening.

This is the buttercream recipe that I have used.
500g butter
1 kg icing sugar
160ml (2/3 cup) milk

Cream butter and icing sugar with electric mixer. Add milk gradually while beating at medium speed until light and fluffy.
Add a small amount of light syrup to thin the buttercream for cake icing. This will make 5 1/4 cup of buttercream with approximately 1 cup of excess.

Make 5 1/4 cups buttercream icing:
• Tint 1/2 cup Black
• Tint 1/4 cup Gray (using Black)
• Tint 1/2 cup Yellow
• Tint 1 cup Red in set
• Tint 1/4 cup Brown Red
• Tint 1/4 cup Blue (add a little Black to Blue)
• Tint 1/4 cup Light Blue
• Reserve 2 1/4 cups white (thin with 1 1/4 cups with 4 teaspoons light corn syrup)

Decorate in numerical order:
1. Ice cake sides, background areas, front windshield, mouth, headlights smooth with thinned white.
2. Ice side windows and small lightning bolt smooth in Light Blue.
3. Ice wheel wells smooth in dark Red.
4. Outline car, windows, mouth, headlights, hood, lightning bolts and tires with tip 3 in Black.
5. Outline number with tip 3 in White. Add tip 3 dot rivets on hood.
6. Cover tires with tip 16 lines in Black.
7. Pipe-in eyes with tip 3 in Blue (smooth with finger dipped in cornstarch). Pipe-in pupils with tip 3 in Black (smooth with finger dipped in cornstarch).
8. Cover car with tip 16 stars in Red.
9. Cover lightning bolt with tip 16 stars in Yellow and Orange.
10. Cover number tip 16 stars in Orange.
11. Pipe muffler with tip 3 in Gray.
12. Pipe shell bottom border with tip 21 in White.

Happy Baking and I'm very happy baking this cake.

My Chocolate chip Hot Cross Buns Experiment

I'm killing two birds with one stone with this bake!

Two birds??? I had two purposes for baking these buns. One is to enjoy freshly baked hot cross buns for coming Easter season. Second is to use this optimized breadmaker bun recipe to investigate the effectiveness of water roux method in bread making without any addition of bread improver.

I've been reading and researching a lot lately about water roux method. I've also spoken to my friend who attended a professional bread making course. He reckons that the water roux method, also known as starch gelatinization, does not essentially produce soft and fluffy breads. "It is the composition of the recipe and the type of flour used that matters..." he said. 

I really need a good evidence to prove either hypothesis and so I'm using this bake to conduct a bread baking experiment.

Here I'm using standard hot cross bun recipe from my Breville breadmaker instructional manual and cook 10% of its bread flour with half amount of water and proceed to make the buns with the cooked dough and the rest of the instructions without adding any bread improver.

*Drum rolling...rapid heart beating...* My exciting result revealed that my friend is right! The water roux method has no effect in improving the bread texture. The buns were soft and tasty when they were freshly baked but were not as good on the next day. I can see the significant difference when I compare them with breads that I've baked with the addition of bread improver.

With this much effort, I'm disappointed to know the truth...*sign* but, I'm not giving up at this moment after reading Lena's comments. Lena, from frozen wings has baked lots of fluffy delicious bread using a good roux water bun recipe. So, my next bread investigation will to bake the buns using her roux water bun recipe without applying water roux method into the recipe and will be curious to see if the recipe composition is the main reason to retain the fluffy bread texture.


Stay tune for my next bread baking investigation...

Here's the Hot Cross Buns recipe from Breville breadmaker instructional manual 
(with my modification in blue).

Make 12 buns

260 ml Water (use 160 ml for Water Roux, add remaining 100 ml into loaf tin)
1 Egg, lightly beaten
1 1/2 tbsp butter
3/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
450g Bread flour (use 50 ml for Water Roux, add remaining 400g into loaf tin)
2 1/4 tbsp milk powder
3/4 tsp bread improver (I didn't add this for my experimental purpose)
2 tsp Tandaco yeast

Icing sugar glaze
1/2 cup icing sugar, sifted
2 tablespoons water

Water Roux method:

Mix 50g flour and 160 ml water together until smooth paste. Using low to medium heat, cook the flour mixture until mixture thicken and firm up like a sticky dough.

Place the rest of all ingredients and the water roux dough into the loaf tin in the above order. Use setting 8 (Dough) and press "start".

Sequence for dough setting is:
1st knead 2 min
2nd knead  28 min
1st rise 10 min
Punch Down 10 secs 
2nd rise 50 min
Total time 1hr 30min

Remove the bread dough from the machine and from the tin immediately when cycle is complete. Divide dough and 3/4 cup chocolate chips into 12 portions and incorporate the chocolate chip into each piece of dough and shape them into rounds. Place rounds close together on a lightly greased baking tray. Cover loosely with lightly greased plastic wrap and leave to stand in a warm area for 30 minutes or until doubled in size.

Blend together 2 tbsp water and 1/4 cup plain flour until a smooth batter is formed. Spoon into a piping bag fitted with a small piping nozzle.

Remove wrap from rolls and pipe a cross onto each bun. Bake in preheated oven at 180°C fan forced for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove buns from baking tray onto a wire rack. If desired, brush icing sugar glaze. Stand 5-10 minutes before serving.

Note: The original recipe from Breville breadmaker instructional manual make 16 buns. The above recipe is the same as the manual but has been reduced proportionally to make 12 buns.


Happy Baking.

A beautiful day and lots of wholemeal breads

It was Labour day yesterday and Melbourne was having this beautiful weather for its Moomba festival and this long weekend. The sky was so clear and blue that gives me lots of feel-good feelings... 

I'm searching for an ideal bread recipe. A bread that gives me lots of feel-good feelings just like my clear blue sky...

Being typically health conscious me, these are the aims that I want in my bread:

1) Whole grains

2) all natural products (ie, honey)

3) avoid using bread improver if possible

4) and most importantly, bread with soft, fluffy and moist texture

However, my aims have not been not easily achieved...

Being impatient, I've tried to incorporate my aims all at a go in a honey 50% wholemeal bread, Unfortunately, this bread is not as good as the ones with bread improver.  Thus, from this point onwards, I've decided to work on my aims step by step.

To improve the texture of wholemeal bread, I'm happy to compromise 50% wholemeal by reducing the content to 30% wholemeal and stick to bread improver and use golden syrup instead of honey. This 30% wholemeal bread is a good start of my search as it contrasts from the 50% wholemeal bread very dramatically.

Next, I replaced the golden syrup with honey in my next bake and I was so glad that the 30% wholemeal honey bread is as fantastic as the 30% wholemeal golden syrup bread!

With the rest of my aims in my mind, my next mission is to try water roux method to see if any difference in improving the bread texture without the use of any bread improver.

30% Wholemeal Honey bread

Great texture for the 30% wholemeal golden syrup bread indicating a promising start for my ideal bread search

Great soft texture too for the 30% wholemeal honey bread

The bread has a combined topping of honey and oat on its top...very nice.

Here's the bread recipes that I've tried...

For a 750g loaf:

30% wholemeal golden syrup bread

Water 310ml
Oil 2 tbsp

Golden syrup 1½ tbsp

Salt 1½ tsp
Bread flour 300g / 2 cups
Wholemeal flour 150g / 1 cups
Gluten flour 1 tbsp
Bread improver 3⁄4 tsp
Milk powder 1½ tbsp
Dried yeast 2 tsp

30% wholemeal honey bread

Water 310ml
Oil 1 tbsp
Honey 1/4 cup
Salt 1½ tsp
Bread flour 300g / 2 cups
Wholemeal flour 150g / 1 cups
Gluten flour 1 tbsp
Bread improver 3/4 tsp
Milk powder 1½ tbsp
Dried yeast 2 tsp

1st knead 2 min
2nd knead 28 min
1st rise 20 min
Punch down 15 secs
2nd rise 20 min
Punch down 10 secs
3rd rise 50 min
Bake time 50 min

Total Time 2 hr 50 min
For this bread, normal proving time at the normal setting is sufficient for the bread to rise.

Place all ingredients into the loaf in the above order. Select basic setting for both 30% wholemeal bread and press "start". For the honey bread, after its final prove, drizzle 1-2 tbsp honey on the bread dough and sprinkle 1 tbsp of oat just before baking. Remove the loaf from the machine and from the tin immediately when bake is completed.

Happy Baking.

Koulourakia

Koulourakia, also known as Greek Easter cookies are buttery pastry that are traditionally hand-shaped into braided circles, hairpin twists, figure eights, twisted wreaths, horseshoes or Greek letters. They have a mild sweet flavor with a hint of vanilla and a beautiful golden colour egg glaze on their top.

Knowing that I'm not a Greek, you might ask..."Why are you baking Koulourakia?"

It all started on one typical morning tea when our half-Greek colleague shared her traditional Koulourakia recipe with everyone. Interestingly, every Greek family has their own different version of Koulourakia. In Australia, most Greek families celebrate their Easter day with their extended community with a large variety of Koulourakia, all in different shapes and flavours. My colleague's recipe uses orange juice and melted butter for her cookies but I prefer the creaming method and so I've decided to use this recipe by Taste.com.

I made these cookies for a Sunday morning tea with my friend and her family and everyone including our kids loves these cookies.

The cookies without the icing sugar..

check out the texture of the cookies...delicious!

Here's the recipe from Taste.com with my slight modifications in blue.

Makes 28

200g butter
1 cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tbs each of orange and lemon rind (I didn't add this)
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup milk
2 1/4 cups plain flour
3/4 cup self-raising flour
1 egg yolk
icing sugar to serve

Preheat oven 180°C. Beat 200g butter and 1 cup caster sugar until creamy. Add 1 tsp vanilla essence and 1 tbs each of orange and lemon rind. Beat in 3 egg yolks. Beat in 1/4 cup milk, 2 1/4 cups plain flour and 3/4 cup self-raising flour. Bring together on a lightly floured surface. Roll 1 tablespoon of the mixture into a 20cm log. Fold in half, pinch ends together and twist 2 times. Repeat. (I shaped it into "S" shapes too.) Place on a baking tray lined with non-stick baking paper. Whisk 1 egg yolk with 1 tbs water. Brush over the cookies. Bake 20-22 minutes or until golden. Cool completely. Dust with icing sugar to serve.

I made 43 cookies with this recipe and bake them at 180°C fan forced for 10-15 min.

Happy Baking

My kind of Apple Tart

This apple tart is really my kind of ideal apple tart. I've "designed" it in the way to use the minimal amount of butter to achieve a great taste. The pastry is the lighter version that I got from a light lemon tart recipe from BBC Australian GoodFood magazine (Nov 2010 issue). With this, I've created a light frangipane mixture to spread the pastry and filled up the tart case with lots of freshly sauté apples.

I've very impressed with this lighter version of pastry; it is flaky and delicious just like most regular shortcrust pastry!  Everyone has their thumbs up for this tart.

I'm submitting this post to the Aspiring Bakers #5 : Fruity March (March 2011) event hosted by Bakericious.

Fresh from the oven...

No wet pastry at the bottom because the apples has been pre-cooked!

Check out the shiny glaze of the tart...yum!

Here's the pastry recipe from Nov 2010 issue of BBC Australian GoodFood magazine.

1 cup (150g) plain flour
50g cold unsalted butter, chopped
1 tbsp pure icing sugar
1 tbsp grapeseed oil (but I used canola oil)
1 egg yolk

1. Place flour and butter in a food processor and process until mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add icing sugar, oil, egg yolk and 1-2tbsp cold water and process until mixture forms a ball.
2. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and roll out to 3-4mm thickness accordingly to the shape of your flan pan. I used a loose based 33 cm x 13 cm tart pan. Transfer the rolled pastry into a flan pan and trim the edges of pastry. Lightly prick base with a fork and chill for 10 min.
3. Preheat oven to 190°C. Place pan on a baking tray. Line pastry with baking paper and fill with pastry weights and bake for 15 min. Remove weights and bake for another 5 min.

My apple fillings:

I cut 4 small to medium size apples to slices in about 5-10mm thickness and salute them with 1 tbsp of rice bran oil spread with 1 tsp of cinnamon until they are slightly soft and tender (see side picture). I did not over-cook them because I want a nice soft crunch of these apples in my finished product. Cool apples completely before assemble on tart case.

My light frangipane mixture:

1 cup (125g) almond meal
4 tbsp icing sugar
25g cold unsalted butter, chopped
1 egg yolk

Apricot glaze: 6 tbsp apricot jam, microwave in low power to slightly melt it 
(I used the weight watcher low sugar one)

1. Place all in a food processor and process until mixture become a soft paste.
2. Spread the frangipane mixture onto the baked pastry and arrange the saulted apple on the frangipane mixture.
3. Spread the slightly melted apricot jam evenly on the apples and continue to bake for 25-30 min. Cool in pan for 10 min. Remove from pan and serve.

Happy Baking.

Lemonade Scones

This is it! I'm now an official lemonade scone fan! These scones are fantastic!

Another amazing thing about this recipe is there is no butter added but only cream with 35% fat content. Yet, these scones are so soft, moist and very tasty.

When I first saw this lemonade scone recipe, I wasn't sure that this will work well as compared to the traditional scone recipes. Then, I came across a wholemeal version of this recipe in the book, Mix & Bake by Belinda Jeffery and became curious to see the outcome of these recipes scones. Now, I'm totally convinced. 

 

Here's the recipe from Taste.com.au

Makes 8
Ingredients
300g (2 cups) self-raising flour, sifted
55g (1/4 cup) caster sugar
125ml (1/2 cup) thick cream
125ml (1/2 cup) lemonade
40ml (2 tbs) milk

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Lightly grease a baking tray.
Place the flour, sugar and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a large bowl. Add the cream and lemonade and mix to form a soft dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured workbench and knead lightly until combined. Press the dough with your hands to a thickness of about 2cm. Use a 6cm round cutter to cut out 8 scones, place on baking tray and brush the tops with some milk. Bake for 10-15 minutes until lightly browned. Serve warm with your favourite jam.

I didn't want to make too much scones and used 80% of the recipe. I reduced sugar to 30g and added 1/2 cup of dried cranberry into the flour mixture. I made 9 scones from this amount.
 
Happy Baking.

Seriously rich chocolate brownies

These brownies are seriously rich and delicious! 

I've made these brownies several times before and made these again this time for an afternoon party at the childcare. This time, the childcare food restriction is much more relaxed and is just "No nuts" only. That was easy for me...

My son love love love chocolate! And I would think that these brownies are one of his favourite because they are so rich in chocolate. I usually made these brownies with 70% cocoa dark chocolate but I've used milk chocolate this time because they are for little kids.

The top of the brownies cracked as I cut these brownies into small pieces but I reckon that the crackling top gives a nice sugary crunch to these treats.

The brownies has a very fudgy texture and it is delicious...

Here is the recipe from the Super Food Ideas, Apr 2010 issue

Make 15 large square slices.
150g butter, chopped
360g chocolate, chopped
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup caster sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup plain flour, sifted
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup chocolate bits
Cocoa powder, for dusting (I didn't do that)

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease and line a 3cm deep x 20cm x 30cm pan.
2. Place chocolate and butter in saucepan over medium heat. Cook with stirring for 3-5 min until smooth and combined. Remove from heat and stir in brown sugar and caster sugar. Cool for 5 min.
3. Stir in eggs, vanilla, flour and milk and chocolate bits. Pour mixture into prepared tin. Level top. Bake for 35-40 min or until top is firm to touch. Cool in pan. Cut into squares. Dust with cocoa powder to serve.
I used 2/3 the recipe and use 20cm square tin and cut them into smaller squares as smaller bite size for tiny little mouths.

Happy Baking