John Kennedy Toole’s hero might not always appreciate his mother’s baking, but her brownies raise fond memories in Kate Young
“Mother, are you making a scene?” Ignatius asked irritably. “Can’t you see that Miss Darlene and I are speaking? You have some cakes with you. Eat those. You’re always complaining that you never go anywhere. I would have imagined that you would be enjoying your night on the town.”
Ignatius was back on radar, so Mrs Reilly reached in her boxes and ate a brownie.
“Like one?” she asked the bartender. “They nice.”
A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
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It’s not the first time I have said it, and it won’t be the last, but I’ve been thinking a lot about my mum lately. This year, while working as a nanny for a ten-year-old and a six-year-old, she is at the forefront of my mind; I am constantly in awe of her parenting. When I was little, and my worldview didn’t extend far beyond our front door, I assumed that everyone must eat as our family did – home-cooked dinners, perfectly scrambled eggs, joints of meat roasting in the Webber.
Of course, gradually, I realised how lucky I was – to have someone passionate about food in my life who had the time, money and inclination to teach me about it. It remains a key part of our relationship; the ongoing WhatsApp conversation between my mum, sister and me is called “International Food Pics”. From three different time zones, we share pictures and descriptions of great meals we have, and ask each other for advice and recipes.
While we certainly benefitted from her skills in the kitchen, I think our wider school communities did too. During my primary school years, though she was a single working mother, mum was heavily involved in the PTA (Parents and Teachers Association). She helped plan our school fete every year: fairground rides on the dusty school oval, games and stalls dotted around the play area, and an epic sausage sizzle – thousands of sausages and piles of onions on big barbeques.
When we moved into secondary school, though she took a slight step back, there wasn’t a school bake sale or cocktail party fundraiser that she wasn’t involved in. The night before these events, she would often arrive home with loaves of soft white bread, sliced lengthways rather than across their width, that we’d fill with chopped boiled egg and cress, or poached chicken. This week, as I helped the ten-year-old bake a batch of cakes for the school bake sale, it was my mum that I thought of.
Mum understood the trick to tackling bake-sale events: try to make life as easy as possible for yourself. Get the bakery to slice your bread lengthways, so you can make nine finger sandwiches at once. Use a familiar recipe – a beloved vanilla sponge batter, or a carrot cake. And do bake the cake in a tray. It’s simple both to bake and, importantly, to portion up and hand out on squares of kitchen roll.
This is my favourite tray bake: Nigel Slater’s famous chocolate brownies from Kitchen Diaries, through which I ribbon some glossy salted caramel. On second thoughts, these are too good (and too full of expensive ingredients) to give away. Hold on to them, and send a tray of vanilla cupcakes to school instead.
Salted Caramel Brownies
Serves up to 16
Ingredients
300g golden caster sugar
250g salted butter
250g dark chocolate
3 eggs (and one additional egg yolk)
60g spelt flour
60g cocoa
1/2tsp baking powder
Salted Caramel
125g caster sugar
60ml double cream
30g butter
1/2tsp Maldon (or other flaked) sea salt
Equipment
22cm square baking tin
Greaseproof paper
Small saucepan
Spoon
Whisk
Mixing bowl
Electric hand whisk
Heatproof bowl
Sieve
Spatula
Skewer
1. Preheat your oven to 180C. Butter and then line the tin with greaseproof paper; the brownie will be too delicate to “turn out”, so do make sure you have plenty of paper to grasp hold of once it’s baked.
2. Before you prepare the brownie batter, make the caramel. Melt the sugar and 4tbsp water over a medium heat, stirring until dissolved and then boiling the syrup without putting the spoon back in. Allow it to turn a rich golden brown, then remove from the heat and whisk in the butter and cream. It will sputter and spit, so be careful of your hands. Add the salt and set the caramel aside.
3. Put the butter and sugar into a bowl and beat together until light and creamy. Try and use an electrical implement (electric hand whisk or stand mixer) if you have one, so you can get the mixture really light.
4. Place 200g of the chocolate (broken into chunks) in a heatproof bowl over a pan of boiling water. Once mostly melted, remove from the heat and stir to melt the final pieces.
5. Crack the eggs, on at a time, into the creamed butter and sugar, beating well after each addition. Add the yolk in too. Pour in the melted chocolate, then chop the remaining 50g chocolate into small pieces and add this too. Sieve the flour, baking powder and cocoa into the mixture and fold in with a spatula until just combined. Do this gently, but do make sure you get rid of any white streaks of butter.
6. Pour the mixture into the tin, then smooth out the top. Use a spoon to drizzle the caramel over the top, then use a skewer to swirl it into the mixture. Place the brownie batter in the oven for 30 minutes. The batter will have risen a little and should have flaked on top. Remove from the oven when a skewer inserted comes out sticky, but without raw dough on it. Start checking the brownies after around 25 minutes, and err on the side of too short a time in the oven; you can always pop it back in for a minute or so, but you can’t reclaim the dense fudginess the middle of a brownie should have. Do remember that it will continue to set while cooling. Allow to cool in the tin for thirty minutes or so, then pull out and cut into squares.
NEWS REFERANCE: THE GUARDIAN
