Recipe: Firehouse (aka Emergency) Brownies

I made a new-to-me brownie recipe on Christmas Eve. We were going over to a friend's house for supper, and I merrily offered to bring brownies. "I'll just whip some up," I said. "It'll be easy." Except that when I got home, there was NO BROWNIE MIX in the house. And the shops were closed. PANIC!

As you can see from the picture below, I did end up sorting it out. Phew. For some reason, I didn't want to use any of the recipes that I could find on the internet. I looked through my rather epic stack of cookbooks and found "Barbara Lauterbach's Firehouse Brownies," in Lora Brody's book The New England Table. I halved the recipe and left out the frosting and chocolate drizzle. My adaptations below.

Recipe: EMERGENCY brownies (aka Firehouse Brownies)
Makes a small-ish pan of brownies (about the same as 1 box of Betty Crocker brownie mix)

2oz dark chocolate (chopped)
4oz butter, in small pieces
2 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup plain flour
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 325F (165C), and grease your favorite brownie pan.

Melt the chocolate & butter in a double-boiler (or in the microwave).

Whisk the eggs and sugar together until foamy. Add the melted chocolate/butter, the vanilla, and the flour and salt, mixing until just combined.

Bake in the pan for 20-25 minutes, until the top is shiny.

Cool & eat!

I have it on good authority that these are better on the second day...

Bread and Sky (2 kinds)

John made bread yesterday - he added caraway and poppy seeds, which was REALLY yummy. James and I made a box of American Betty Crocker brownies from the airbase, which went down very well. Here's the aftermath of all that baking:


It was really showery yesterday, and at one point in the late afternoon the sky was really dark and rainy on one side of the house, with the sun shining brightly on the other side.


And I even caught the rainbow:


I'm a sucker for rainbows, and they happen all the time in the UK because the weather changes so fast!

So the OTHER 'sky' in the title is Sky TV. For the Yanks, nobody here has 'cable'...you either have an aerial or you have satellite TV. Sky is essentially the only satellite provider, which is a bit of a bother. We ordered their cheapest, off the grid plan (all we REALLY want is BBC2 and the odd football/tennis match and dog show - and the TV is v. snazzy and we love it - thanks mom and dad!), and when the guy came to hook up the dish, he couldn't. Basically, they're only insured to drill through external walls. And as our TV isn't on an external wall he suggested we move it. We then pointed out that there was a TV point on the wall behind where the TV is. He looked at it and said that we'd have to hire an 'independent' (i.e. not Sky) to install, as he'd need to go into our loft space to hook up the already existing and perfectly functional except that it needs to be connected to a dish satellite plug. BAH. So now Sky are refunding our £ - hopefully - and we have to pay MORE money than we'd originally paid Sky to get the thing hooked up in the loft. So the fancy-pants pre-wiring of the TV that the builders did ends up costing us extra. Go figure. And it's going to be at least another week before they can hook it up.

My mother has a theory that everything that's done in England has to be done at least twice...it's shaping up to be true (although I haven't had the best of luck with Verizon/Cablevision/TimeWarner etc in NYC either...)

Thoughts, moral support, and invitations to come over and watch TV would be appreciated. :)

Brownie Points

I have the best husband in the world. I'd mentioned to him that I was feeling a little homesick last week - I think the darkness was really getting to me. So what did he do?


BROWNIES!! 2 boxes of American Betty Crocker brownie mix, to be exact. It turns out that the wife of one of the guys he works with goes to the US Airforce Base a lot, and can buy 'merican' food there. And so John asked him to buy 2 boxes for me. And they arrived today. Whattaguy!

I'm going to make one box this weekend and ration the other for when I'm feeling homesick again.

Oh, and I took the photo in the 'photo studio' (two pieces of black card, one taped to the wall) in our office at lunch break. I'm so high-tech.