Nov 3, 2016

Brownie Butter Cake | Manju's Eating Delights turned 5!


I'm several weeks late in celebrating my blog's birthday but well these days I'm just not able to keep up with anything...Lol!
Though I wouldn't call last year a successful one at blogging as I was literally MIA for almost 9-10 months, this space is still thriving and it still has a lot of loyal followers. I'm so thankful for the love and attention you all give to this space and thereby to me as well. Muah!!



Manju's Eating Delights published it's first blog post on Oct 15th, 2011. Since then it's been my passion, stress buster and companion all along. I love to cook, bake, take pictures of the food I cook and of my family and my favorite part is sharing it here on this little space where I can pen my thoughts, share my opinions and ofcourse safekeep recipes and memories like an online diary of sorts. I started this blog when my son was a sweet little 3 month old and now he's 5years old and now I have another sweet little 3 month old girl. I love my family and they keep me going. 



As many of you know I love Cakes. No celebration according to me is complete without some cake. I've had my eyes on these Brownie Butter cakes ever since I saw a pic of them on Bee's space via Pinterest.  Btw...I just love Pinterest. My other love is Food Network and I can get spend any number of hours immersed in both :-P





These are so easy to make and its the best of both worlds.  In one bite you get a mouth melting butter cake and rich chocolaty brownie. Yumm!

The Butter Cake here is a killer I tell you. It just melts in your mouth. It's one of the best recipes I've tried and makes a perfect 6" cake if you want to make just the cake by itself.

For the Chocolate Brownie portion, if you prefer a sweeter brownie either use Sugar in your recipe or use semi-sweet chocolate chips. I felt the original recipe of Dark chocolate chips with brown sugar resulted in a rather less sweet brownie but the sweetness form Butter Cake makes up for that. So it's your call.


Brownie Butter Cake
Makes 1 loaf cake or one 6" round cake

You’ll Need
For Brownie
5oz Dark Chocolate (Or use Semi-Sweet Chocolate)
¼ cup unsalted Butter
¼ cup Brown Sugar (Or regular Sugar)
1 Egg
¼ cup All purpose Flour

For Butter cake
½ cup unsalted Butter
½ cup Sugar
2 Eggs
1 cup sifted  All purpose Flour
¼ teaspoon Baking powder
3 ½ Tablespoons Milk

Directions:
1. Pre-heat oven to 350 F.
2. Grease and line a loaf pan with parchment paper  (Loaf pan size : 4”x8”)

To make brownie
1. Using double boiler method, melt chocolate and butter and once mildly cooled,  add in brown sugar (or regular sugar) and mix until sugar is fully blended in.
2. Add in the egg and mix well. Finally fold in the flour and mix until everything is combined.
3. Pour the brownie batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake for 15 minutes and remove from oven.

To make Butter cake
1. In a bowl, beat Butter and Sugar until smooth and creamy.
2. Add in the eggs one at a time and beat it well.
3. Sift and combine the All-purpose flour and baking powder and fold it in alternating with milk and mix well to form a smooth and thick batter.
4. Reduce oven temp to 320F and spread the butter cake batter very quickly over the brownie and bake for 25-30 minutes or until fully baked. A toothpick inserted in the cake should come out clean.

Some Notes:
1. For the Brownie if you prefer a sweeter taste, use regular Sugar instead of brown sugar. Else use Semi-Sweet Chocolate chips instead of Dark Chocolate.
2. The cake batter when spread over the hot brownie may start to melt, so we need to spread it very quickly or pipe it on using a piping bag.
3. This entire brownie Butter Cake can also be made in a 6”x3” round cake pan if you do not have the correct loaf pan. I used mini loaf pans and adjusted my baking time accordingly.

Source: RasaMalaysia
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Do try this out, trust me, you won't be disappointing! I sign-off now wishing myself plenty more years of blogging ahead and a deep heartfelt Thank you to all who are with me :-)

You can keep up with Blog updates on my FB page

I also share snippets from my life and cooking experiments on :
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ManjusDelights

If you would like to keep up with my craze on Pinterest, follow me here:
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/manjumanish1/

-Manju

Sep 26, 2016

Chocolate Brownies with Walnuts


A warm hello to all. This little space of mine had been silent for a long time now. I missed blogging terribly but I must admit taking a break really helped. A lot of new changes have taken place in the past 10 months and each thing needed it's own personal time and space and blogging definitely took a back seat. 

I wanted to give a long detailed explanation to my absence but I'm going to save you the boredom and just say two major developments happened in the past half year.
First : End of Jan 2016 we moved out of Minneapolis to the Queen city of Charlotte, North Carolina. Although we are still settling down and miss our old friends and familiar places, we have started liking this city and have started making new friends. We bought a new house and Lil'Appu started Kindergarten this year and seems to happy with all his new buddies. So lots of things kept us really busy.

Second: Lets hear some Drum-rolls....we had our second bundle of joy almost a week after Appu's 5th b'day. Yes, my lil'Appu has a little sister now. On July16th,2016 our baby girl, Mihika was born!
So being pregnant until July 16th and being a new Mommy to a newborn from July16th were the other things that I was upto in between all this shifting, house hunting, office work and settling down...Lol!!

We are simply happy to be new parents again and Appu is a dotting big brother who can't seem to get enough of giving her hugs and kisses. We are both happy and super busy with a newborn at home and she is obviously taking up all my time. Our baby girl is 2 months old and times flying past and we are doing our best to absorb all the baby cuteness.

I haven't really bothered with much cooking or baking in a long time. Nothing that was blog worthy at least. Last week however I was feeling a bit relaxed and baby Mihi was being a very good girl so I decided to make a simple batch of Chocolate brownies. I was actually able to make them undisturbed while baby Mihi slept and they came out perfect :-)
I wasn't even planning to blog about it, but when I shared a pic of the brownies on FB, I got hundreds of requests for the recipe and I felt these brownies have to be shared, they are just that good!

I didn't take any good pics, just took few on my mobile and sharing those here. These brownies are almost fudge like, very chocolaty and chewy and the walnuts added a perfect crunch. If you do not prefer walnuts add chocolate chips for a little bite. The top has a nice flaky crust as well as you can see.




Chocolate Brownies with Walnuts
 Makes around 16-20 brownies

You'll Need 
5 oz Semi-sweet Chocolate (chopped)
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted Butter, cut into pieces
2 Tblsp Cocoa powder
1 cup granulated white Sugar
1 tsp Pure Vanilla extract
3 large Eggs (at room temperature)
¾ cup All-purpose flour
Salt, a pinch 
¾ cup chopped Walnuts

Directions:
1. Pre-heat oven to 350F.  Grease and line an 8" square baking tray with parchment paper. (I used a 9” square pan, an 8” square pan gives thicker brownies)
2. Add 5oz chopped chocolate and chopped butter pieces in a glass bowl and melt them over a double boiler (place the bowl over a saucepan of simmering hot water)
3. Once completely melted remove from heat, add cocoa powder and sugar and whisk gently until the sugar is incorporated well.
4. Next whisk in the vanilla extract and eggs one by one beating well.
5. Finally, stir in the flour, salt and walnuts.
6. Pour into baking tray and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a little batter and a few moist clumps clinging to it. Do not over bake.

Recipe Source: Joyof Baking

I'm not going to make any promises that I'll blog frequently from now but I'm surely going to try to be more regular here. It's such a relief to get back to doing old things that I loved doing and it's great to get back in touch with you all. Do say Hi in the comments if you happen to visit :-) 

-Manju