Baking break and boozy brownies

I told you there would be cake.

It’s a well known fact among my friends and family that I like to bake. Cupcakes, cookies, brownies, the lot. My friends usually get baked gifts on their birthdays. I even took three days off work to bake for my friend’s wedding last year. I’m one of those people who, in a very pathetic and juvenile fashion, profess to have been a Mary Berry fan-girl before she was cool, aka pre Bake Of fame. Let’s face it, baking is kind of my thing.

However, of late I may have let it slide a little. I could make all the excuses under the sun about people being on diets and staving off cake and not having the time, but these would just be great big porkies.  What has actually happened is I’ve just gotten lazy and have spent more and more of prime Sunday baking time in bed watching Grey’s on Netflix and intermittently napping.

Now, it’s safe to say that my crappy excuses haven’t fooled my housemates Chloe and Laura. In my interview for my room in my Tooting flat (before which I’d had three glasses of wine, so I was a little tipsy – but that’s a story for another day), I announced that I like to make cakes. It may have even been the main reason they chose me to be their flatmate. So when I moved in and the fabled baked goods didn’t materialise they, quite rightly, began to not-so-subtly hint that I should get my ass into the kitchen and get to it.

On my birthday, knowing by this point that I’m also a fan of one or two alcoholic beverages of a night out, C and L bought me a rather excellent birthday present. Wrapped up separately in a bag, clad in leopard-print wrapping paper (love a bit of Pat Butcher chic), were two limes and bottle of coke (in phallic formation, see below), a bottle of white rum, a bar of chocolate and a copy of ‘The Boozy Baker’ by Lucy Baker. On page 110 was a post-it, marking a recipe of Cuba libre brownies, containing, you’ve guessed it, Coca-Cola, white rum and lime. So who am I to say no, right? The trick worked.

So this weekend (not gonna lie, 5 weeks after said birthday), I rustled up some of these tasty treats. Now I know it’s January and people are trying to be healthy, but sometimes we all need a brownie with rum and about 4 million calories, right? Right?!

These brownies, as it turns out, are ridiculously good. Squidgy and boozy and chocolaty and all that great stuff (not to blow my own horn or anything). So all this pre-ramble has come to this: the recipe. For the full version, make sure to check it out here – it would be a disservice, as well as blatant copyright to claim it as my own. So when you find yourself in your pjs at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon eating cheerios for dinner, give them a go. Believe me, your housemates, family and friends will appreciate it, which makes the effort worth it!

FOR THE BROWNIES (sorry – it’s in American measurements)

1 ½ cups sugar

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

10oz dark chocolate

½ pound unsalted butter

1 cup granulated sugar

3 large eggs

¾ cup Coca Cola

¼ cup white rum

FOR THE FROSTING

1/ lb unsalted butter (room temp)

3 tbsp cocoa powder

1/3 cup white rum

4 cups icing sugar

Zest of two limes