I have been promising to bake my husband a batch of brownies for months now; today, I finally made good on that promise. I wanted to make mint brownies because I bought a bag of mint chips at the chocolate festival I attended in October. I have yet to write the chocolate festival properly but to save it kind of niche event that showcased chocolate and chocolate products that that perhaps only the chocolate obessed would have the time peruse. Mint has not really been part of my baking repertoire to date, which is surprising given how well it goes with chocolate and the fact that I am married to a man who loves chocolate. It’s clearly a union that’s long overdue.

I decided to use a normal recipe and just add a cupful of mint chips to the mixture. It seemed rather simple, and it worked quite nicely. It was certainly a soothing way to spend a Sunday afternoon while Storm Darragh raged outside. I took quite some pleasure in mixing together the melted chocolate chips and butter into gorgeous silky batter. It was quite satisfying chopping the chocolate bar into chunks. I chose to bake the brownie mixture for 28 minutes and they are quite gooey! More so than I have ever experienced, so that was new and quite pleasant. The middle part of the tray was basically like chocolate lava, oozing molten chocolate. There is quite a bit of chocolate in this recipe, which I think added to the sense of decadence.

The final product? Delicious. It’s minty and chocolaty and gooey. It’s so minty that it reminds me of toothpaste, not in a bad way, but in a way that makes me think ‘this is so healthy!’. So of course I kept eating more. It was a fitting dessert after my delicious plate of jollof rice (another blog post for another day), like a much needed warm hug and helped me lean into whole cozy Christmas thing, which I am trying very hard to do at the moment.

Ingredients

• 200g unsalted butter (I always use salted butter now)
• 200 g dark chocolate chips (I used the Guittard ones)
• 175g brown sugar , loosely packed
• 3 eggs , lightly beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 75g plain flour
• 30g cocoa powder
• Pinch of salt
• 180g dark chocolate block/bar (optional) , chopped into chunks rather than shards, (bittersweet or semi-sweet, cooking chocolate (I used a left over packet of 90% dark chocolate)

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F (160°C fan forced).

• Spray a 20cm/8″ square tin with oil and line with baking/parchment paper with overhang (to facilitate lifting the brownies out of the tin).

• Place butter and chocolate chips in a heatproof bowl, microwave in 30 second bursts until melted. Stir until smooth.

• Add sugar and vanilla, mix, then add eggs and mix well until smooth and molten.

• Add flour, cocoa and salt and stir until smooth. Stir in chopped chocolate, pour into pan.

• Bake 24 minutes for really gooey in the centre, 28 minutes for fudgey but still very moist, 32 minutes for moist fudge-cake-like. If you didn’t use the extra chocolate for stirring in, reduce cook time by 2 minutes.

• Rest for 10 minutes before lifting out of the pan. Allow to cool for at least 20 minutes before cutting. Store in an airtight container for 4 days or freeze for 3 months.