This American classic is one of the easiest sweet treats to make. The recipe could be written in one sentence: melt butter and chocolate, whisk eggs and sugar, combine, fold in flour and bake. The most delicious brownies I’ve ever had were made by Scottish food writer Sue Lawrence; they contained fresh raspberries and inspired my chocolate & raspberry brownies recipe. Frozen raspberries won’t work, they’re too moist, so if fresh aren’t available just leave them out, or add some nuts instead – hazelnuts, walnuts and macadamias all work well. Chocolate is notoriously hard to match with wine; sometimes a sweet fortified works but, as these brownies aren’t very sweet, I prefer a Speyside single malt whisky, such as Craigellachie 13 year old.
Makes 15 pieces
Ingredients
- 200g salted butter
- 200g dark chocolate
- 4 eggs
- ⅔ cup light brown sugar
- 125g raspberries
- ⅔ cup plain flour, sifted
Method
- Preheat oven to 180°C.
- Grease and line a 20cm x 30cm baking pan.
- Place butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. When half melted, add chocolate, remove from heat and stir until just smooth. Set aside to cool.
- Meanwhile, whisk eggs and sugar together for a few minutes, until creamy.
- Fold in chocolate mixture and raspberries (it doesn’t matter if they get a little squashed).
- Fold in flour and pour into the pan.
- Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a wooden skewer inserted comes out almost clean (there’ll be a little cake clinging to it).
- Remove from oven, place pan on a wire rack to cool then refrigerate until cold.
- Cut into squares and serve.
FAQ
Who invented the brownie?
It seems there’s two parts to this story. In 1893, Bertha Palmer asked chefs at her husband’s hotel in Chicago to create an easy-to-eat dessert for the boxed lunches served in the Women’s Pavilion at the World Columbian Exposition. They came up with the brownie, though it seems they didn’t give it that name. Fanny Farmer is widely credited with publishing the first brownie recipe in The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook in the early 1900s, though there may have been an earlier one published, in 1899, in a community cookbook from Machias in Maine.
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