With Mother’s day only one week away are you stuck for ideas? Maybe you could bake your Mum some brownies presented on a vintage platter along with a gorgeous cup and saucer.

As this is the last Brownie Brag blog entry we thank you for sharing this journey with us and contributing, please continue to use and enjoy the site and save your favourite recipes until the end of May 2013, but don't forget to print your favourite recipe before the site is taken down. 

What Brownie recipe will you be enjoying on your next occasion or event through life?

Baking requires specialty skills and exacting quantities, unlike cooking a family dinner, and at first can seem a bit daunting.  It is recommended that novice bakers follow recipes step by step, until they get an understanding of the consistency of the recipes they are baking, as well as the peculiarities of their ovens. But like anything, the more you practice, the more confident and capable you will become.

Baking Brownies is a specialty form of baking as it requires one to work with chocolate. Some recipes recommend you melt chocolate in a saucepan, others suggest you melt it a bowl over a saucepan of boiling water (not allowing the bowl to touch the water), while still other recipes may require you to melt the chocolate in the microwave.  For our recipes, we recommend that you choose the method you are most comfortable with.  There is no right or wrong answer.

The more you bake, the less likely you are to measure ingredients exactly, as the consistency of the mixture, and the taste, is what you aspire to.  You also become more confident in substituting ingredients, and soon the possibilities become endless. 

With a bit of flair, a standard chocolate brownie could be transformed.  Imagine taking that simple recipe, and adding some raspberries soaked in champagne, and some white chocolate chips and crushed macadamias to add some richness; the possibilities are endless.

If you could create a designer a brownie, what special ingredients would it include?

Many brownie recipes call for good quality cooking chocolate but what exactly does that mean? Have you ever stood in the baking section and wondered which one should you buy? Do you purchase by cost or by a brand you recognise?

The taste and quality can vary depending on the ingredients and the way it was made. Chocolate starts out as a cocoa bean which is then processed and combined with milk, butter and sugar to make the final product. Dark, milk, white, compound, couverture – all types of chocolate (except white) but what is the difference and which one for baking and cooking?

This list of varieties from Taste.com.au might help…

Dark chocolate
Dark (or plain) chocolate is the richest variety. Due to the relatively high percentage of cocoa solids and small amount of sugar, the flavour can be bitter. The quantity of cocoa solids differs between varieties – some are ideal for eating just as they are. Others have a higher percentage and are better suited for cooking.

Milk chocolate
Milk chocolate is a popular eating chocolate. It contains less cocoa solids than dark chocolate and has added milk solids, which makes it sweeter and creamier than dark varieties. However, it is also less easy to melt than dark chocolate.

White chocolate
White chocolate is made from cocoa butter, milk and sugar. It doesn’t contain any cocoa solids, therefore it is not strictly a chocolate, but the flavour is light and sweet. When purchasing white chocolate be sure to check the ingredients as some brands substitute vegetable oil for cocoa butter, which results in an inferior product.

Couverture chocolate
Couverture chocolate is a high quality chocolate intended primarily for coating or dipping. It has a higher percentage of cocoa butter than dark chocolate, so it must be tempered before use. Tempering is a specific method used to melt and cool chocolate which results in a crisp and smooth chocolate with a glossy finish.

Good-quality cooking chocolate
Good-quality cooking chocolate replaces a small amount of the cocoa butter with vegetable oil, making it easier to melt.

Compound chocolate
Compound chocolate entirely replaces the cocoa butter with vegetable oils. This diminishes the quality and flavour but makes it easier to melt and set without tempering

Chocolate bits
Chocolate bits (or chips) contain a balance of ingredients that allow the bits to be baked in biscuits and cakes, yet retain their shape.

Another consideration when choosing chocolate is to consider how the chocolate was produced and choose Fair Trade chocolate if you can. Cocoa beans are often produced in developing countries where farmers and labourers are not paid a fair price. Fair Trade chocolate can be purchased online and may also be available in health food stores or where Fair Trade or organic products are sold.

Check out the Five Tips for Cooking with Chocolate from Le Cordon Bleu website.

But how much of a difference does the type of chocolate make? Ree from The Pioneer Woman Cooks posed the question and set about to solve The Great Baking Chocolate Debate with three types of brownies and a blind taste test: read the results here…

To ensure the highest quality recipes while planning the site, the Brownie Brag team endured a difficult weekend of testing all the brownie recipes!

One that did not make the grade was a Beetroot Brownie. Vegetables can be baked into sweets - carrot cake is delicious and we had heard of a beetroot and chocolate cake; so perhaps it could work. Unfortunately it was a little like eating chocolate that had been rolled in dirt according to one of our expert brownies samplers.

And that is where the rating ‘Yuck, I spat it out’ came from … true story...

Have you ever cooked with beetroot and chocolate? We’d love to hear how it went! 

It all started with a post graduate university assignment. Four individuals thrown together to build a website to encourage audience participation.  The first task was to decide on a topic,  something of interest to us all and to a wider audience. 

The first idea was a cyber recipe book, however once we delved into the enormity of the project we decide to narrow our focus.  With a shared love of baking we decided on a website to share, bake, rate and review our  favourite brownie recipes and see if we could find better ones ... Brownie Brag was born! 

In a team that spans thousands of kilometers the steep learning curve we all faced as individuals while handling the pressures of own personal demands on our time provided its own set of challenges.  

Along the way we discovered new skills and new tools we will take with us long after this subject has finished.  Google and YouTube have become our best friends. Every question we had could be answered with a search phrase and the click of a button.  Want to know how to build a Weebly website - there's a video for that! How do you add a comments section? There's a step-by-step video for that too. 

We invite you to join us on the Brownie Brag journey - share, bake, eat, rate and review - follow our blog and share the site with your friends and family. 

Anita, Madeline, Suzie & Tanya