Brownies and Rhubarb Cake

EDIT - now the brownie recipe is included, below...

So sorry about the absence - Tabitha and the cats collaborated in a joint project of somehow flinging the computer across the sofa, snapping the little USB internet thingy.  So I was without internet for a week - scary times.  No matter - now I have a fancy Telstra broadband hub thing, it is super fast and excellent.

Yesterday, our wonderful midwives Jan and Kelly held a working bee for their new midwifery clinic (the first of its kind in Australia!) called MAMA, a.k.a. Midwives and Mothers Australia.  The Daddy, Tabitha and I trooped along to help out - The Daddy did some excellent painting, I baked some bits and pieces and brought along a mountain of egg sandwiches, and Tabitha helped out by being generally adorable and also passing the odd screwdriver as required.

Here she is washing the windows with two sponges, having a grand old time:

I baked a rhubarb cake, improvising with my favourite 'old standby' apple cake recipe, but with pureed rhubarb as the filling.

To bake the cake, simply cook about 6 stems of rhubarb, sliced into 1cm pieces, with around half a cup of water and a few tablespoons of sugar.  Once tender, pour off the excess water and mash to a rough puree with a fork.  Taste it - you want it to be quite tart, but not shockingly sour.  About the same as cooked, unsweetened apple.  Add a little more sugar if you think it needs it.  Add a tiny drop or two of pink food colouring if your rhubarb is particularly wan looking.

Mix in a bowl 120g wholemeal self-raising flour, 115g ordinary self-raising flour, 150g sugar, an egg, a teaspoon of vanilla extract and 125g of melted butter.  Press 3/4 of the mixture into a greased and lined 20-22cm round springform, then carefully spread the rhubarb puree over the top.  Next, use your fingers to flatten out pieces of the remaining 1/4 of the mixture, placing it over the top of the puree.  Sprinkle the top generously with demerera (or plain) sugar and some cinnamon, then bake at 180 degrees for around 45 minutes, or until lightly golden brown on top.

See how lovely the vibrant rhubarb looks:

Here is the top layer of cake, with little bits of rhubarb poking through, sprinkled with the sugar and cinnamon:

When baked, the top layer of mixture will spread, covering any gaps:

The rhubarb makes for a very pretty cake, and the sourness of the rhubarb offsets the fairly sweet cake nicely:

I also made chocolate brownies.  I am not even slightly exagurating when I say that these are The Best thing that I have ever made.  Ever.  They were so gooey, richly chocolatey and perfectly thick and fudgey.  They have walnuts, and some dark chocolate chips.  The batch produced around 50 or so small squared of brownie.  They are completely worth making!

The recipe is just slightly adapted from the brownie recipe in the 'Chocolate' section of Nigella Lawson's brilliant 'How To Be A Domestic Goddess' book, which is now more than a decade old.  It is a book which gets used almost weekly in our kitchen, with many of its recipes in regular rotation - the madeira and seed cakes, the rosemary loaf cake, the American pancakes, the steamed syrup sponge, Granny Boyd's biscuits and the sponge drops are all favourites in my kitchen.

I have peered at the photograph of the brownies in the book so often - read through the recipe, thought about making them.  I have absolutely no idea why I have never made them before now - they are straightforward, and life-changingly good!

Easily The World's Best Chocolate Brownies

375g unsalted butter

375g high quality dark chocolate (I used Lindt 70 per cent this time)

6 large eggs

1 tablespoon of vanilla extract (that's right people, a tablespoon, not a teaspoon)

500g caster sugar (of course, I used my standard vanilla-infused caster sugar)

225g plain flour

1 teaspoon of salt

350g chopped walnuts (you could use salted peanuts, that would be pretty awesome, or hazelnuts)

A good handful of dark chocolate chips (you could use white or milk if you prefer)

Line the base and sides of a 23cm x 33cm tin with baking paper.

Melt the butter and the chocolate together over low heat in a large heavy-based saucepan.

In a large-ish bowl, beat the eggs together well with the sugar and vanilla.

Measure the flour and salt into another bowl.

When the chocolate mixture has smoothly melted, set aside to cool for a bit, then beat in the eggs and sugar, then the flour and then the nuts and chocolate chips.  Beat well with a wooden spoon to combine, and then scrape the lot into the prepared pan.

Nigella says to bake at 180 degrees for around 25 minutes, however I must say that, even with my super-powerful oven, I needed nearly 40 minutes.  Why?!  I don't know.  Normally I need less time than recipes specify, so I will still be checking from 25 minutes next time.  I must stress, however, that it is important not to overcook them - even a few minutes too long will result in dry brownies (very, very sad).

When the brownies are done, the top should be set, turned into a pale, smooth and glossy thin crust, while the middle will still be dense and goey - a cake tester should come out clean-ish around the edges, but still somewhat goopy in the middle (they will continue to cook and set as they cool down).

Allow the brownies to cool completely in the tin - it is perfectly fine to let the tin sit on the kitchen bench overnight (preferably sitting on top of a cooling rack).  If you lined the tin well with baking paper, you should be able to use it to carefully lift the entire slab of brownie out at once, then cut into squares on a board with a large knife.

If, at worst, your middle section is still a little too gloopy to cut into neat brownies, do not despair!  Simply wrap the soft section in some foil, heat in the oven, and eat with ice cream.  In fact, I recommend intentionally leaving the middle section a little undercooked for this purpose - the mixture makes plenty, so you will still have dozens of brownies!

Here is the back view of the fabulous MAMA centre - it is an amazing space, light-filled and enormous, with a large backyard outdoor area.  Lots of families and babies came down to help, and we all had a whole lot of fun helping out.

Tabitha napped in her pram, parked outside in the shade - we found a spot where The Daddy could peer out and watch her sleep through an open window while he painted:

Those of you who are scared by small harmless pythons, a quick heads-up to avert your eyes now.  Here is a gorgeous little photo of our baby Marilyn (who is coming up to one year old now!), wrapped neatly around my pony tail while I sat on the sofa: