Recipe: Chocolate Brownie Cake

Something a little bit different today - a recipe post! Personally I love reading recipes/food posts on blogs, perhaps I should make this a more regular thing? Anyway, on to the recipe. I'm not really a huge fan of chocolate desserts or cakes, but for some reason I just can't get enough of chocolate brownies. I've adapted my failsafe brownie recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery into a cake with delicious strawberry frosting sandwiched between the layers. Unfortunately I didn't realise I only had about 30g of icing sugar left when I started making this, so the icing was a bit of a failure but it still tastes amazing!

You will need:

For the brownies:		For the icing:
200g dark chocolate		100g icing sugar
175g butter		35g butter
325g caster sugar		2 tablespoons cream cheese
130g plain flour		6-8 strawberries
3 large eggs

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 170 degrees C, then melt the butter and chocolate in a large bowl over a pan of boiling water.
2. Once completely melted, add the sugar and mix until well incorporated.
3. Add the flour and mix well. Finally, add the eggs and beat until the mixture is smooth.
4. Divide the mixture equally between two small cake tins (I used ones 8 inches across by 1 inch deep) lined with greasproof paper.
5. Put in the oven and leave to bake for approximately 40 minutes.
6. For the icing, beat together the icing sugar and butter until there are no lumps.
7. Mash some strawberries with a fork (or put them in the blender for a few seconds) and add those to the bowl along with the cream cheese and mix well.
8. Once the brownies are cooked, remove from the oven and leave to cool. Once cooled completely, spread the top of one half with the icing and place the other half on top.
9. Decorate with sprinkles, chocolate shavings or strawberries.

YUM SO GOOD. This would be great to make if you're having a party or picnic this weekend as it's easy to slice up and share. Unfortunately my icing turned out really runny but if you actually check you have the right ingredients before starting, it should turn out soft but quite stiff so it shouldn't be too messy when you cut it up.

Are you a fan of chocolate brownies?

Gillian x