Never Too Much Of A Good Thing

Prompted by a friend's birthday, I decided some baking was in order. Chocolatey baking. Preferably of a portable-without-getting-squashed variety.

It takes a special type of perversity to have an exciting new Kitchenaid* and new cupcake wrappers, and to decide to bake something that requires neither. This was described as a slice, but might be more accurately thought of as a brownie with icing.

One of the things I liked about this recipe is that it uses cocoa rather than actual chocolate, but still has a very rich, chocolatey taste in both the slice and the topping. It also doesn't give so much of that over-indulged feeling after eating it (although it might if you had several pieces in one sitting!).

The recipe was from the Australian Women's Weekly Mix cookbook. I doubled this quantity** and used a combination of soft brown and dark brown sugars, but other than that, didn't tinker around.

For the slice
125g butter, melted
1 cup (220g) firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup (75g) plain flour
1/4 cup (35g) self raising flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1/2 cup (45g) dessicated coconut
For the icing
1 cup (160g) icing sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder
10g butter, melted
1 1/2 tbsp hot water, approximately

Preheat oven to 180°C / 160°C fan forced. Grease 19cm x 29cm slice pan; line base with baking paper, extending paper 5cm over long sides.

Combine butter, sugar, egg and extract in medium bowl. Stir in sifted flours and cocoa powder, then coconut. Spread mixture over base of pan.

Bake slice about 30 minute of until firm (mine, in the evil Smeg, took 22 minutes for a double quantity, staying nice and moist in the middle).

Meanwhile, make chocolate icing. Sift icing sugar and cocoa powder into medium bowl, stir in combined butter and water until spreadable.

Spread hot slice with chocolate icing; sprinkle with extra coconut. Cool in pan before cutting.

I was quite happy with both the look and, more importantly, the taste of these (and the batter was good too). It also gave me the chance to try out some cute new plates I've recently bought (a set of four, each a different pastel colour) and, at last, I've acquired a daylight bulb to hopefully improve the photographic efforts from my night baking stints. At this murky time of year, there's no guarantee there'll be great daylight on the weekend anyway, so it was becoming an increasing necessity. Especially looking back at the old, badly lit photos.

* I know it was a few months ago, but the novelty is far, far from wearing off!
** The other penguin looked somewhat concerned that I might take all of the end result for birthday purposes, so it seemed an idea to make a large batch...