Chocolate box brownies.

Hey, this week I've been itching to bake! everyday I've come home from work and scoured the cupboards for ingredients to make something only to find there's always a few things missing (Itching to bake, too lazy to shop)

So today I cracked, and determined I stomped into the kitchen saying, no! there must be some ingredients in here to make something tasty, anything baked, Preferably chocolate. Then I found the remains or a box of Quality Street left over from Christmas, usually they wouldn't last a few days but I must have hid them for my own sake. And I remembered a great idea to use up extra chocolates courtesy of C from Cake, Crumbs and Cooking and that was to make a chocolate box cake. The idea is really simple, you just make a tray bake cake or brownie and then ice it and top each section with a different chocolate. The idea is that you then save the menu from the box of chocolates and let people choose there own piece. Well I deferred from the idea a bit as as all of my chocolates were wrapped so I had to unwrap them which meant you couldn't follow the menu but each piece is still topped with a different choccie giving a good variety and choice.

I chose to make a low fat chocolate brownie (I didn't have enough butter for regular) topped with vanilla buttercream. Mine pales in comparison to C's glorious efforts as mine was a little rushed and unplanned but I love this idea and will definitely try it again when I have some fancier chocolates. Any way here it is:

Yep I went and made a low fat brownie then topped it with icing and chocolates (I also added more sugar) yup that's definitely the way to go!

here's the recipe:

(I used cups rather than grams today)

1 cup Flour 
1/2 tsp baking powder
5 tbsp Cocoa
3/4 Cup of sugar (I used golden caster sugar)
1/2 cup of low fat yogurt
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 teaspoon of almond extract (This was a last minute addition as I was short on vanilla but it tasted good)
1 1/2 tbsp Sunflower oil
1/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 180degC and line a baking tray with paper. Put the flour, cocoa, baking powder and sugar into a mixing bowl.
Mix in the yogurt, eggs, almond essence (or vanilla) oil and milk and mix well until all the ingredients are combined. Pour into the pan and level and bake for 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Leave to cool and then ice with your preferred frosting.
I used vanilla (I had used the rest of my cocoa on the cake any way) which is just a little butter (As i only had a little anyway), icing sugar milk and a few drops of vanilla. (I've posted the recipe a few times on this blog before.) 

Then top with your left over chocolates! If you have a menu card from the box remember to keep hold of it. And that's it my thrown together cake from leftover chocolates and not many ingredients in the house.

What I've learnt tonight though is that I really need to stop being so lazy and do a food shop to re-stock. hehehe

Oooh you'll also notice I now have a little handy button at the end of each blog that allows you to print the recipes it's very handy as you can choose to print with or without pictures and you can delete whole paragraphs of my inane ramblings with just one click so just keeping the important recipe bit! 

Bye for now

Cupcake Kris xx