Thursday 9 May 2013

Bank Holiday Blues - Oreo Brownies



Aren't Bank Holidays brilliant? Are they fuck!

Never have been, picture the scene, a small boy with a really miserable look on his face having his picture taken stood in the pissing down rain next to his mum with Blackpool Pier providing the backdrop.

Then substitute that backdrop for Scarborough, Bridlington or Whitby, pretty much any seaside town within a 2 to 3 hour radius of Leeds.

This my friends is the story of my childhood, those Polaroids still exist as proof.

So this is what I don’t understand, why does a day off work compel families to do something? What's this need we have to be doing something, anything got to do something. Why does convention dictate that you can't spend a bank holiday doing what you want - bugger all?


It'd be great to do nothing wouldn't it? 

Imagine a whole extra day off work where you could actually relax and enjoy. Problem is you then you go in to work the next day and the conversation would probably go along the lines of : -

“What did you do yesterday?”

“Nothing, just stayed at home”

“That was a bit of a waste wasn’t it?”

They'd look at you like you'd just taken a dump on their living room floor.

Why?

Is it human nature that forces us to get into a car or onto a bus and travel somewhere to spend a miserable couple of hours with other people who have had the same ridiculous idea?

Just think about it rationally, if someone asked you the following would you do it?

“Darling, how about tomorrow we sit in traffic for four hours, pay a fortune for shit food, have a massive argument on the way there and back and want to kill the kids within 30 minutes of leaving?”

“Sounds great, what time shall we set off?

“4am”


Of course you bloody wouldn't - but you do.

The Answer is we are all pursuing the Holy Grail of family life, that is - quality time, sharing common interests as a family the whole 'we wanna be together' syndrome. Bloody people on TV and in books giving us advice telling us we’ve got to have it, we can’t survive without it.

Well my interests are going to the football, playing golf and drinking beer. Fit that one into your family time Denise Robertson.

So obviously given my 39 year hatred of Bank Holiday outings we stayed at home this Monday.

Did we buggery. We went on a trip.

Cadbury World this was our day out and all I can say is wow. 

Against my preconception I actually found it interesting, the history, the chocolate making process, manufacturing and marketing etc.

They obviously glossed over the links to the slave trade and the Spanish massacre of the Mexicans to get the cocoa beans in the first place but hey who hasn’t changed the actual facts for a good story? *looks at shoes*

The wow really comes from the amount of chocolate they try and push on you, like some crack dealer trying to get you to try it for the first time.

We had an allocated time of 9:40 so queued up to enter, had our tickets scanned and were immediately furnished with 8 bars “to start with” – to bloody start with? What the hell was I going to finish with? A diabetic coma?

Unsurprisingly the descendants of the Gloop Family, who seemed to be having a reunion there on the same day, had no issues consuming this amount before being presented with more and then more again.

Throw in some liquid chocolate as a taster and then the make your own concoction with jelly babies, biscuit or marshmallow and the result was  500 Mr. Kreosotes waddling around the gift shop buying the obligatory crap. This crap consisted of chocolate bars as big as your head.

Our trip down was actually ok, mainly as I’d had the foresight to break up the journey with a visit and overnight stay at Mrs. Vino’s Aunties.

The trip back however went as expected….

I’m an only child and have never had to share the back seat with anyone, being a short arse as well meant that I’d usually lie out and go to sleep across the full length of the seat. I’ve actually missed entire countries by being asleep.

However put N & M together in a car for 5 minutes and they bicker, 10 minutes and they start to prod and pinch, so taking it to its natural outcome an hour in they’re kicking the crap out of each other.

Now the perceived wisdom when disciplining children is to not threaten anything that you can’t follow through on. 

However I am a massive failure at this. The whole "if you keep doing that I’ll send you to your room routine" just doesn’t cut it for me. Yes I can follow it through but frankly it’s dull.

So here are some of my Top Punishment Threats – frankly you’ll see they’re completely useless but even if I do say so myself they are quite creative :-

1 – Arguing in the car - I’ll make you walk home from here (we were in Birmingham)

2 – Moaning about having a hair wash - I’ll get all your hair shaved off

3 – Arguing in the car – I’ll turn the car around and we’ll go home (we’d driven 3 hours and were 2 minutes from the destination)

4 – Not listening to me – I’ll give you away to another family

5 – Complaining about dinner – I’m going to throw your dinner in the bin and send you to live with the school cook if her food is so much better

Basically without shouting at them I’ve got nothing.

I’ll let you into a little parenting secret, though it may not be the pc approach, it works. Yes there may be a few tears occasionally but it never did me any harm.

The recipe this week had to be something with chocolate, I mean what else could it be.

This is a Lorraine Pascal recipe and although I usually don’t go in for all her baking made easy crap but this works really well.



Oreo Brownies

Ingredients

165g Butter plus extra for greasing

200g Dark Chocolate - grated or finely chopped

3 Eggs

2 Egg Yolks

2 tsp Vanilla Extract

165g Soft Light Brown Sugar

2 tbsp Plain Flour

1 tbsp Cocoa Powder

Pinch of Salt

154g Oreos, broken into quarters – or whatever chocolate biscuits you like

Icing Sugar for dusting

Method

Preheat the oven to 180c

Grease a 20cm Square baking tin with butter, then line with baking paper, the paper overlapping the sides a little

Melt the butter in a pan over a medium heat

When the butter has melted, remove the pan from the heat and add the chocolate

Leave to stand until the chocolate melts and then stir together

Using an electric whisk, whisk the eggs, egg yolks and vanilla together until the eggs begin to get light and fluffy

Add the sugar in two lots, whisking well between each. Try to pour it around the side of the egg mixture as you want to keep as much of the air that has been whisked in as possible

Whisk until the mixture becomes stiffer

Once the egg mixture is ready, pour the chocolate into it - again around
the sides trying to keep the air in

Add the flour, cocoa powder, salt and a third of the biscuits and stir until fully combined

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin

Scatter the remaining biscuits over the top, pressing them in slightly

Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 25–30 minutes. The middle should be very slightly gooey

Leave the brownies to cool in the tin - the top will sink and crack a little

Pull the brownies out using the overlapping paper and cut into squares

Dust with icing sugar

Enjoy.

A

NB – We did make it home unscathed and all talking to each other, we’ve still got 10 bars of chocolate left and I can’t wait until the 27th for the next Bank Holiday, if you see me that day you might as well kick me in the nuts to complete the experience.


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