Old fashioned brownies (cocoa powder only)

My mam baked only now and then when we were young, usually a tray of queen cakes which we would then be invited to cover with royal icing to hide the black spots (sorry mammy), eve’s pudding (remember that?) and the odd ‘cake' of soda bread which was round with a cross on top as distinct from a loaf. 

Of course, there were also the obligatory Rice Krispie buns for parties (or more commonly in our house, cornflake buns which didn't seem quite as exciting at the time). Like most households, the baking centre-piece was the thickly iced Christmas cake which was adorned with the latest in 80s mini Santas and trees and proudly presented each year . 

Brownies only came into my consciousness well into my teenage years and I was instantly a huge fan. This happened to be at the height of my chocolate obsession and their fudgey goodness seemed to offer the perfect antithesis to teenage angst,  unrequited love and all the other desperate things I had to suffer.

Most brownie recipes today seem to contain a good amount of high cocoa percentage chocolate in replacement of some (or all) of the traditional cocoa powder. I've made (very nice) brownies like this on a few occasions but always half resented using up all of my black (70-85 per cent) chocolate like that. With most of the chocolate- heavy recipes requiring a minimum of 70 per cent cocoa solids in the first place, I figured I'd get back to basics for this week's treat for the Roses tub and see if my flittered packet of cocoa powder was up to the job.

It definitely was. These were just as nice as the chocolate-heavy batch I made a couple of weeks ago and I am definitely a convert to going old school on the brownie baking and saving my chocolate for emergencies (they happen!). The addition of a few chopped dates gave some caramel chew and this batch was optimistically cut into 1 inch squares in an attempt to enforce some discipline on this increasingly sugar reliant house.

I am learning slowly that under-cooking really is the key to a delicious fudgey brownie. If you happen to prefer  a cakier texture in yours, I'm sorry,  but we just can't be friends. 

As I said already, we didn't have brownies in our house when we were small but if we had, we would probably have used this recipe which you can find here..

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