accidental brownies

Mum made Almond Roca the other day. Well, not the trademarked-comes-in-a-box almond roca, but a toffee-almond-chocolate concoction that tasted remarkably like the addictive stuff.

Upon my return to the big smoke, I thought I'd give it a try too. I found this recipe and thought, "right, a stick of butter, does that mean the whole 250g pack that we get in Australian supermarkets?" If only I'd checked this out first...

So after putting the entire 250g pack in, I was left with a fudge-like substance that didn't resemble my Mum's creation at all. Oops.

Solution? Turn it into brownies! 

I usually use a brownie recipe from my ever-trusty Kid's Cookbook - this is adapted from the Donna Hay Modern Classics cookbook.

Ingredients

250g butter

1 and 3/4 cup brown sugar

1 packet of Coles slivered almonds (125g?)

1 packet Old Gold dark chocolate (400g)

1 cup plain flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1. Line a lamington tin with baking paper.

2. Melt butter in pan and stir in brown sugar until it dissolves. Stir continuously for 7 minutes, just like the about.com recipe says, and then ask Mum "why doesn't it thicken?" Mum then says, "no! My recipe said to leave it alone and wait until it thickens." Sigh in over-exasperated fashion.

3. Melt chocolate in microwave. It took my microwave about 2 minutes on medium power.

4. Leave butter and brown sugar mixture alone. Create glass of ice-cold water on Mum's instructions. Drop tiny bits of toffee mixture into water until it forms a droplet rather than dissipates into the water. Get excited.

5. Stir almonds into toffee mixture.

6. Pour toffee mixture into lined lamington tin.

7. Pour chocolate over toffee mixture. Wonder why the toffee seems to be separating into toffee and butter.

8. Place lamington tin into freezer as per about.com recipe instructions.

9. Retrieve lamington tin from freezer 20 minutes later and present to Mum in dismay.

10. Find Donna Hay cookbook and stir eggs together with flour and baking powder in medium mixing bowl.

11. Preheat oven to 160 degrees celcius.

11. Pour in mass from lamington tin into mixing bowl and stir until combined.

12. Pour mixture into lamington tin once again.

13. Wait until little red light switches off on oven, meaning oven is ready to accept foods. Place lamington tin into oven and hope for the best.

14. Bake for approximately 40 minutes or until skewer comes out clean when inserted into centre.

In the end they turned out ok. Lesson to learn? Mother knows best...