Recently my husband took some time off from work to be a stay-at-home Dad! Not significant time…just 2 weeks.. Till my Mum came to help with the kids and we went back to being corporate slaves. It was a well deserved break given he was working through Christmas and the holiday period. My 2 year old was absolutely thrilled to have him around. It was a cheerful farewell in the morning to Mummy, sending me off to work, only because Daddy would be around (She’s daddy’s slave).
So while my husband was spending time with his little girls, his elves were hard at work and holding the fort till his return. It was only fair to treat them to a home-cooked meal on a Monday evening. We all hate Monday right? Back to same old routine for the rest of the week, groggy mornings, tiring evenings. And the worst thing is deciding dinner for Monday evening. And so it was easy to pick a day of the week for the dinner party – MONDAY! Give the elves something to look forward to and give us the weekend to prepare 🙂
We kept the dinner simple, just some salad, roast chicken and veggies. Dessert on the other hand was decadent – Brownie Pudding! I was looking to make something rich and the original plan was to make something flour-less, but then I came across this recipe from Barefoot Contessa on the Food Network website. It has fantastic reviews and people have raved about it giving it 5 stars! As Ina Garten puts it, it’s between a pudding and a brownie, I think it could even classify as one big molten cake.
A few tips:
- Beat the sugar and eggs for a minimum of 5 mins. My Kitchen Aid had gone for fixing (SOB) so I used a hand held mixer
- The mixture will look pale yellow and thick and once you add the dry ingredients you know you beat it enough if it all mixes up and looks like mousse
- If you have an oven which gets very hot very soon (like mine), keep an eye on the pudding and don’t bake for 1 hour. Bake for 35 mins and check again and put in for another 5 mins if it looks too undone
Ingredients:
1/2 C butter
4 eggs
2 C sugar
3/4 C cocoa
1/2 C flour
1 vanilla bean pod OR 1 tsp vanilla
Directions:
- Pre-heat oven to 170C and lightly butter an oval dish (9×12) and set aside
- Melt the butter in the microwave and set aside to cool
- Beat sugar and eggs for 5 mins on medium-high speed, until pale yellow and thick, then add vanilla
- Sift flour and cocoa together and fold into sugar and eggs mixture
- Finally, add the butter and mix until just combined and pour into buttered dish
- Place buttered dish in a larger baking pan and pour boiling water into the pan to create a water bath or bain maire. Water level should just come up to half way of the dish
- Pop in oven and take out when tester inserted 2 inches from side comes out 3/4 clean
- The center will seem under cooked, but it’s meant to be that way, to give it the pudding texture
- Serve warm with Vanilla ice cream
