Quickie brownies

I'm going away on a conference in about the week, so tomorrow's going to be my last OUCKC session for the year, so I thought I'd bake something and bring it along. This is essentially this brownie recipe that I did last year with less faff. And apparently some clubmembers are mildly (not deathly) allergic to nuts, so I'm doing half with nuts and half without.

Quickie Brownies
Ingredients

• 110g Chocolate
• 110g Butter
• 110g Plain flour
• 1/2 tsp Baking powder
• 210g Caster sugar
• 2 Eggs, beaten
• A decent slug* Vanilla extract
• A few handfuls** Chocolate chips
• A handful Almonds
  
• A decent slug Almond extract

Method

1. Melt the chocolate and the butter in a double boiler.
2. Remove from the heat and sift in the flour, sugar and baking powder.
3. Once cool enough, beat in the eggs and vanilla extract.
4. Stir in the chocolate chips and pour half of the mixture into a greased sandwich cake tin.
5. Add the almonds and almond extract to the remainder and pour into a greased sandwich cake tin.
   
6. Bake at 180C/Gas Mark 4 for ~25 mins.
7. Allow to cool for 10 minutes before removing from the tin.

Ready for the oven (end of step 5). The nuts are the white bits in the one on the right.Just out of the oven.I've never had this happen to me before... I'm getting the impression that I didn't grease the sides of the tin quite well enough! The other one released from the tin really rather easily. Oh well, it's not going to affect the taste at least.*Yes, that is a standard unit of measurement when I'm baking.
**And so is that.

Verdict: Pretzels (Take II)

Wow. I'm utterly impressed - these are exactly as I remember from Oktoberfest (except much smaller - maybe next time I'll just make one giant pretzel). Absolutely incredible! Next time I should go and get some Erdinger in...

Baked not grilled

The oven's fixed so time to give it another go! Minor changes to the recipe this time around, but they are only slight changes.

Pretzels (Take II)

Ingredients

• 400g Strong flour
• 1 sachet Fast-acting yeast
• 1.5tsp Salt
• 150ml Water
• 100ml Milk
• Coarse salt
• ~3tsp Bicarbonate of soda

Method

1. Mix the flour, yeast, salt, water and milk in a bowl and form a dough.
2. Knead the dough for ~20 minutes and leave to rise until doubled in size, covered.
3. Gently press the air out and knead the dough for ~10 minutes more.
4. Divide into 4 equal portions. and leave for ~45mins to prove.
5. Roll each portion out into a sausage shape, roughly 50cm long then shape into pretzel shapes.
6. Bring a large pan of water to the boil. Boil the pretzels individually for about a minute, then remove to a paper towel to dry.
7. Oil a baking sheet well.
8. Make a solution of bicarbonate of soda in a mugful of water. Dip each pretzel in the solution, sprinkle with the coarse salt and place on a well-oiled baking sheet.
9. Bake at 190C for 20-25 mins until dark golden brown.
10. Remove to a wire rack to cool.

Here are the newly shaped pretzels (end of step 5).
After boiling (end of step 6).And the finished product! What a difference an oven makes. Oh my word though, they look good!I should probably confess that the photos are very slightly disingenuous - the pretzels baked on a roasting tray stuck like crazy and I left the bottom layer on the tin. But the one baked on a non-stick tray posed no such problems. But man, don't those look good?!