My Favourite Milk Chocolate Brownies

June has been a busy month! With work, studying and ultra-marathon training, I also managed to squeeze in a race involving 50 miles of cycling, a mountain run and a canoe. So that's my excuse for not being as up-to-date with my blog posts as I would like! However, my partner has also been training for the ultra, and is covering so many miles each week. Sometimes we both need a high carbohydrate and calorific treat, but with little time to go to the shops, I had to root through my cupboards to find something to bake.
Luckily I pretty much always have a stash of cheap chocolate (I get the supermarket own-brand), which I find great to use for simple bakes. We also had eggs, cocoa powder, butter and brown sugar. With all of these ingredients, I thought I'd have a go at milk chocolate brownies.

Milk chocolate brownies are usually quite a bit sweeter than the traditional (which tend to use the higher percentage cocoa solid dark chocolate). The addition of the cocoa, however, knocks back this sweetness, and the texture wasn't affected at all. The outside was lovely and crisp, with a soft centre that could still easily be cut. I added white chocolate chips to mine, but chopped walnuts would be amazing as well (sadly I had none in my cupboards).

I was really happy with the result, and if you wanted to serve this as a dessert, bake the brownies for 2 minutes less, so that they are a little gooier. Serve warm with some ice cream, and that'd be bliss!
The version I've baked are perfect as an afternoon treat, or as replenishment after a really hard run.

I also prepared and cooked these beauties in less than an hour, so no excuses...GO :)

Makes around 16

Ingredients:

• 175g (1 cup) milk chocolate, chopped roughly
• 175g (3/4 cup) softened butter (margarine will also work), plus 1 tsp for greasing
• 3 eggs
• 250g (1 & 1/3 cups) light soft brown sugar
• 40g (1/3 cup) cocoa powder
• 75g (1/2 cup) plain flour
• pinch of sea salt
• 60g (1/3 cup) white chocolate, chopped into chunks (or use chocolate chips)

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 180c (160c fan)/355f/gas mark 4. Lightly grease the base and sides of a 20cm square cake tin, and line with baking parchment.

2. Place the milk chocolate and butter into a heatproof bowl, and place over a pan of simmering water. Make sure that the base of the bowl DOES NOT touch the water.

3. Stir regularly until all of the butter and chocolate have melted. Set aside for 5 minutes to cool.

4. Whilst the butter/chocolate are cooling, pour the eggs and sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer with a whisk attachment (or use an electric whisk). Whisk for 5 minutes (on a medium speed) or until the mixture has at least doubled in size and thickened.

5. Sift the cocoa and flour over the egg mixture, add the salt, and pour over the butter/milk chocolate mixture. Fold together until no more flour speckles can be seen.

6. Briefly fold in the white chocolate chips until fairly evenly spread through the batter.

7. Pour into the prepared cake tin. Bake for 25-30 minutes (or for 20-22 minutes if you want a super gooey centre), until the top is crisp and if you shake the tray a little, it only wobbles in the very centre.

8. Remove from the oven and leave to cool fully before slicing (unless serving warm with ice cream of course).

9. Enjoy!!

Keep these in an airtight container in the fridge, and they theoretically will last a good two weeks (but they are pretty moreish so they're not going to ever last that long in my household!)