I made these when I was very, very cross. In fact, I’m just gonna go ahead and say it, I had PMT. I was so grumpy, it was actually ridiculous. I shouted at a sofa, a laptop, my phone and Richard. Luckily he’s very patient and extremely understanding so just laughs at me when I lose my temper at everything! In return for his patience I shared my anger quashing brownies. I find that chocolate is good for when my hormones are on the blink and I add extra chocolate enhancing flavours like cardamon and coffee to make them even more consoling.

Anger Management Brownies

Ingredients

100g butter (plus extra for greasing)
200g dark chocolate
4 eggs
200g golden caster sugar
1 teaspoon of ground cardamom
1 espresso (or 50ml of very strong coffee)
50g honey
1 teaspoon of rosewater
130g plain flour
1 tsp of baking powder
30g cocoa, and a bit more for dusting

Method

1. Line a 20cm square cake tin (or similar sized rectangular one) with a piece of baking paper and grease well with butter. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
2. Put the chocolate and butter in a bowl which is fitted on top of a pan of just boiling water, heat until both are melted.
3. Whisk the sugar and eggs together until the mix has about doubled in size and is a lot paler than it was when you started whisking.
4. Add the espresso, ground cardamom, honey and rosewater to the egg mixture and whisk again to combine.
5. Now pour the melted butter and chocolate into the egg mix and whisk once more until smooth.
6. Then fold in the flour, baking powder and cocoa and then tip the mixture into the prepared tin.
7. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Don’t worry if it’s still quite wobbly in the middle, it will set more when it’s cold.
8. Leave to cool (if you can wait that long) then slice into squares, dust with cocoa powder if you’re feeling fancy.

I like to serve mine (if I’m feeling particularly grumpy) with a good slice of action movie! Yippee–ki–yay!