About

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a software engineer living in Asheville, North Carolina, in the USA, with my wonderful wife Emily Thomforde. I grew up in Scotland, and previously lived for a long time in the San Fransicco Bay Area, in California.

I like to consider myself a generalist, but I seem to have specialized in Apple software platforms in my career. I enjoy hobby electronics.

At the turn of the century I was educated in Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh. I have fond memories of it.

Creme Egg Brownies: The Recipe

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:00:00 +0100

Adapted from The New Best Recipe’s Classic Brownie recipe.

The original blog post about this recipe is here.

Ingredients

6 Cadbury Creme Eggs
430g (~15 oz) Cadbury Bournville chocolate
45g (~1 1/2 oz) sugar
115g (~4 oz) butter
140g (~5 oz) flour
4 eggs (original recipe called for large, I used medium though)
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking powder

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 325ºF (170ºC).
Grease a 9 × 13 inch pan with butter.
Pre-mix the flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl (you will not need to fit anything else in here).
Gently melt the butter, Creme Eggs (not the real eggs) and chocolate together. This is easiest to do in a double boiler, or bain-marie.
Hopefully, the melted mixture will become smooth and silky. It did not for me. If this doesn’t melt correctly, but instead, after mixing, is more of a soft fondanty consistency, don’t despair, mine went like this and it was still fine after the next couple of steps.
Remove the chocolate/Creme Egg/butter mixture from the heat, and mix in the sugar. The original recipe said to use a whisk for this step and the next, but my mixture was too thick for that, so I used a spoon.
Wait until you think it’s cool enough that the eggs won’t cook (it should not be very long if you didn’t overheat the chocolate), and add the eggs one by one, mixing each in thoroughly.
In three batches, gently folding, mix in the flour (with the baking powder and salt from the bowl you premixed them in earlier).
The mixture should now be smooth and silky, quite thick, but thin enough to pour.
Pour the mixture into the pan you greased earlier. Pour into the middle, and it should run into the corners. You can use a spoon to flatten it out if you need to. If it’s not flat on top, or you just want to get some aggression out, lift up the pan and drop it on the table a couple of times to even out the top.
Place the pan in the centre of the pre-heated oven.
Cook for 30-40 minutes. Test for doneness by inserting a cocktail stick or chopstick into the centre of the pan. When you remove it, it should have moist crumbs all over it, but no hint of actual liquid batter. If the stick is covered in brown batter, it’s not done yet. If there are no crumbs at all, you’ve left the brownies in for too long!
Remove from the oven and leave in the pan for two hours on a wire rack to cool (I know, I know, but it’s worth it!).
Cut into squares as you serve. If you don’t want to eat it all at once (or maybe just can’t eat it all at once), leave the remainder uncut in the pan covered in cling film to seal.

That’s it! You probably won’t be able to not eat it when it’s fresh, but I’d say it definitely tastes better after a day or two.