Note: This brownie recipe gives you a light and crumbly-cake
texture - I used nuts and didn't bother with frosting. Yields a nice
batch, so stick to the standard recipe - don't double it or halve it
(+/- 3 dz nice sized squares).
Mix and boil:
1 cup water
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup butter (I didn't use the home butter, Mooi River. Went with the Spar brand butter)
1/4 cup cocoa (use a good brand always! Nomu ranks high with most people)
When this mixture is a little cool, then add to it:
2 cups sifted flour
2 cups sugar
Beat until smooth (I used an electric hand mixer on medium speed
to get the mixture to a smooth batter)
Then add in:
2 eggs Beat this in with your mixer, Then add in:
1/2 cup lightly whisked buttermilk or sourmilk (I used Inkomazi sour milk as there wasn't any buttermilk on the shelf at the time I went to buy the ingredients)
Beat this in with your mixer, Then add in
1 tsp bicarb of soda (and ensure this is well combined into the batter) Lastly add in
1 (or 1,5!) cup pecans (I used walnuts as I had these in the fridge, and it tasted great. I didn't halve them or crush them roughly, kept them whole. Turned out great keeping them whole!)
Pour the batter into a baking tin (I used the mini loaf baking tray which has 8 mini loaf moulds filling them halfway, and then some extra batter went into a separate loaf pan about 1/3 way up)
Bake for 180C for 35 to 40 min (Given I used the individual baking loaf moulds, and not a big baking pan, I had to be vigilant with the baking time so from 30 minutes I kept checking to ensure it's not
getting burnt at the bottom. The usual best test is checking with a skewer/knife in the highest part of the cake, comes out clean etc.)
Let the baked cakes cool in their pans/tins for about 10 minutes before you invert them onto a wire rack to further cool off.