Brownies, Doc Martin and Twilight Eclipse

All of a sudden people are talking about Doc Martin - it's the English comedy starring Martin Clunes and is filmed in Port Issac in Cornwall. Such a funny, sad, painful romantic comedy. But I also enjoy very much the lovely scenery in a special place on the coast of England that very few people ever get to see in person. Plus this is my first introduction to Martin Clunes who is great in this show. This program is now in it's 5th or 6th season on the regular (PBS) network programming. We found it on Netflix and are enjoying watching it - just into Season 2 right now.

So, last night I had a friend over to watch Twilight Eclipse, (having finally got her to read the books and see the first 2 Twilight movies) plus 1 episode of Doc Martin so she could get on board with this comedy. I had fresh made "Saucepan Brownies" and Haagen-Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream. These brownies are from a recipe book entitled Woman's Day Cooking For Two and the nice part about these brownies is there are just enough brownies for 2 people - not a whole panful that dry out or have to be eaten all at once. Plus they are really easy to make in about 5 minutes on the stove then they're ready for the oven. And you can add 2 more kinds of chocolate (and dried raisins or cherries or cranberries if you're wacky like me) to make the popular triple chocolate brownies so much in vogue.

Saucepan Brownies - from Woman's Day - Cooking For Two
3  Tablespoon butter
1 square of unsweetened chocolate (I use unsweetened Bakers Chocolate)
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup coarsely chopped nut - pecans, walnuts

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
Melt the butter and the chocolate in a saucepan over low heat, stirring; let cool. Beat in the vanilla and the sugar. Add the egg, beating well. Stir in the flour and salt and then the nuts. Spread in a small buttered pan or baking dish - I use a glass bread pan that's 8 inches by 4 inches. Bake for about 15 or 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center emerges clean. Cool and cut into squares. Makes 4 good size brownies depending on size of pan.

(If you want to make this the triple chocolate kind that everyone is so fond of now, add 2 more Tablespoons of butter and 1 and 1/2 Tablespoons of unsweetened coco powder (Dutch processed if you have it, otherwise Hersheys Cocoa) to the batter as you are melting this over the stove. Then just before you put this in the oven to bake add 1/2 bar of Ghirardellis or Special Dark Hersheys semisweet chocolate broken into chunks and stirred into batter.)

Enjoy a movie night!