In a move that will surprise absolutely no one who has ever tried to get a child to eat a vegetable, cookbook author Kate Jenkins has released a trio of brownie recipes that promise to turn the family kitchen into a zone of peace, not warfare. Her new book, "The Brownie Book: Wickedly Irresistible Chocolatey Bakes" (DK, £16.99), offers three recipes - a Chewy Toffee Crisp Brownie, a Carrot Cake Blondie, and a Cinnamon Roll Brownie - each designed to be simple enough for small hands and decadent enough that adults will inevitably fight over the last square.
Let's start with the Chewy Toffee Crisp Brownie. This one requires a 20cm square baking tray, a freezer, and a certain amount of faith. You first make a toffee crisp centre by melting 50g unsalted butter, 100g light soft brown sugar, and 40g golden syrup, then stirring in 40g toasted rice cereal (yes, Rice Krispies). You freeze this for an hour until solid, then sandwich it between two layers of brownie batter made from 175g butter, 100g dark chocolate, 300g caster sugar, and the usual flour-and-eggs situation. Bake for 35 - 40 minutes at 180C (160C fan), cool completely (this is essential, they stress), top with melted milk chocolate, chill for another hour, then cut into 12 bars. Total time: prep 10 minutes, chill 2 hours, cook 1 hour, plus cooling. The payoff: a chewy, crisp, fudgy holy trinity.
Then there's the Carrot Cake Blondie, which is basically a brownie that's trying to be healthy and failing gloriously. You melt 175g butter with 1½ tsp cinnamon and 150g white chocolate, add 300g caster sugar, 150g plain flour, ½ tsp baking powder, 3 eggs, 150g grated carrot (squeezed dry, because nobody wants soggy blondie), and 50g toasted walnuts. Bake for 40 - 45 minutes, cool for one to two hours, then top with a cream cheese frosting made from 75g butter, 150g cream cheese, 200g icing sugar, and vanilla. The recipe notes that even "veg-avoiding kids love" this, which is either a testament to the power of sugar or a lie we're all willing to tell ourselves. Makes 9 squares.
Finally, the Cinnamon Roll Brownie, which is a brownie reimagined as a Swiss roll. You make a standard brownie batter (175g butter, 100g dark chocolate, 300g sugar, etc.), bake it in a 20x30cm Swiss roll tin for 20 minutes, then roll it up while still hot with baking paper inside. Let it cool for four to six hours (yes, hours), unroll, spread with a cinnamon butter filling (70g butter, 200g icing sugar, 1 tbsp milk, 2 tsp cinnamon), re-roll, chill for 30 minutes, then drizzle with a simple icing and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Serves 8, assuming you don't eat it all yourself while pretending it's for the family.
All recipes are edited extracts from "The Brownie Book," available for £15.29 from guardianbookshop.com. Jenkins promises these are "perfect for little hands in the kitchen" and that "grown-ups will happily claim the last square, too." In other words, the usual brownie diplomacy: everyone wins, no one gets hurt, and the dishwasher is someone else's problem.