Chilli Chocolate Brownies & Cookbook Giveaway

You’ll all start thinking I’m some sort of domestic goddess if I keep blogging about baking. If you are beginning to have thoughts of this persuasion, please rest assured that I am just greedy.

In anticipation of that most controversial of days, Valentine’s Day, I have made some chilli chocolate brownies. I think they’re a little bit more grown up than your average sickly sweet chocolate treat, and perhaps they represent how we should all approach this lover’s holiday: with a little bit of an edge to temper the sweetness. Chilli and chocolate is one of those flavour combinations that is always going to scare some people away, but it works really well here. Then again, what do I know, I have happily eaten Marmite chocolate in the past.

If you would like to bake these too – and I really think you should – here’s how.

You’ll need 150g softened butter, 150g plain chocolate, 150g chilli chocolate, 175g sugar, 3 eggs, 75g plain flour, half a red chilli, and 75g almonds.

Heat your oven to 170C, and grease and line a tin. First of all you need to melt 100g of the plain chocolate and 150g of the chilli chocolate, along with the butter, in a bowl over a pan of water. Once it has melted, leave it to cool for a moment, then beat in the sugar. Add your eggs one at a time, then sift in the flour. Once everything is combined, stir through the remaining 50g of plain chocolate, almonds and red chilli. Pour the mixture into your lined tin and bake for around 30 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. A good trick with brownies is to shake the tin – if the mixture wobbles, put them back in the oven. If there’s the tiniest of ripples in the middle of the tin, you can take them out and leave them to set for really gooey brownies, or if you prefer them more cake-like leave them until the mixture doesn’t move at all.

For more baking ideas, try some firm favourite cupcakes, or go for something different this Pancake Day.

I decorated a few with some tacky icing sugar hearts, and stashed them away to give to my boyfriend. The rest I cut into smaller pieces so that I can share them with whatever hungry people happen to stop by (and eat them myself, of course).

Now for what you’ve all been waiting for – the free stuff. I have two lovely cookbooks to give away to one lucky UK based reader: The Big Book of Bread, and British Baking in 2012. (Trust me, the recipes will be just as delicious in 2013.) To win, all I want you to do is leave a comment on this post telling me what you would choose to bake for Valentine’s Day, and leave your email address so I can contact the winner. Entries close on the 13th February.

This post was created in cooperation with Baking Mad. All words, pictures and opinions my own. The recipe is recreated in my own words but comes from the website. I had to make a few small changes to the original recipe due to availability of ingredients. For more Valentine’s Day baking ideas click here.