I know I am on a diet and focusing more on all things fitness these days. The last few posts have been about all things fitness and I should stick to that. There is no fitness without those cheat meals. We need to create imbalance every once in a while. Human body is an amazing piece of machinery. It adapts quickly. So if you need to include cheat meals to give your metabolism that much needed kick. That my friend is a true story. I am not an advocate of cheat days but a little indulgence once in 3 days works for me.
I think it works differently for everyone but the underlying theory is same more or less. I have often seen people missing out on meals because they had a piece of cake as a part of their cheat day. I think we just need to understand at any point the body should not be devoid of nutrients. Enough said. Please read this article and also this.
So this week I ran 13 kms on Thursday morning and that left me with a considerably free evening.
I decided to bake something for my office team. I also had that itch of creating that perfect tissue-thin crinkly crust on top brownie with gooey-ness inside.
I have my standard brownie recipe but this time I changed the recipe a bit and it turned out really nice. My idea of a good brownie is thick, fudgy, firm, dark chocolaty, very chewy and rich. It should not be dense, too gooey or under-baked. It needs to have that tissue-thin crust on top and should just melt. Well in this house we take our brownies very seriously. That's all.
Here it is:
Ingredients
1/2 cup cocoa powder (I used Hersheys this time)
1/2 cup Fresh Cream (I had lots of malai saved up)
100 gms Butter at room temperature
1/4 cup almonds ( I didn't have walnuts so I used almonds)
1 Mars chocolate bar chopped in to smallish chunks (You can use any chocolate chunks. I enjoy the fudgy taste of Mars)
1 Tsp Vanilla extract
1/2 cup White Flour + 2 Tbsp
1 Tsp Baking Powder
2 Eggs at room temperature
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup cane sugar (You can use 3/4 cup of White sugar)
Method
Roast almonds well in a pan. Crush the almonds using mortar and pestle or alternatively using a mixer and keep aside.
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees centigrade. Line an 8x8-inch baking pan with butter paper and grease with oil
Heat butter on low heat in a thick bottomed pan until it is browned. Combine the cocoa and mix well. Add sugar and fresh cream and whisk well. Add eggs one at a time and whisk really well ( I did it for 10 minutes). Beat in the vanilla extract and mix well.
Sift flour and baking powder in to the mixture and mix well.
Stir in almonds and chocolate chunks in 2Tbsp of flour and throw this mixture in the brownie batter
Pour the batter in the pan and bake for 25 minutes at 200 degrees.
Tip: Make sure the oven is really hot when you place your brownie pan inside the oven
Enjoy..
Ciao..