(Cancer-free, but not calorie-free, this one. If you’re on a diet, diabetic, sugar-free, wheat-free or dairy-free, look away now.)

I thought, it being Friday and all, you might fancy a chocolate brownie. As the internet is not yet sophisticated enough to let you help yourself, here’s the next best thing: the recipe. I promise you, they are the easiest thing in the world to make.

Bah! Brownies

You need:

Preheat the oven to 170C/325F/Gas 3.

In a pan, melt the chopped butter and broken-up chocolate over the lowest possible heat. It will take ages, and that’s fine, because you don’t want any burning. (I usually put this on to melt then measure everything else out and get the tin ready while it does its thing.)

When the butter and chocolate have melted, take the pan off the heat. Stir in the sugar, then the flour, then the eggs: you should end up with a thick, shiny mixture.

Pour the mixture into the tin. (You’ll notice I have a fancy tin that goes into sections – a leftover from my cake business days – but you really don’t need one. Anything roughly the right size will do. Lazy cook’s tip: to line the tin, tear off a piece of greaseproof paper bigger than the tin, and scrumple it into a tight ball in your hands. Unscrumple, and spread it into the tin – it should be nice and flexible and go into all the corners and up the sides without fighting back. If you have a bit of overhang, all the better for getting the brownies out later.)

Now pop it in to the oven, have a coffee, and 25 minutes later, go take a look. You want a flaky top, and if you have that, take the brownies out of the oven. If not, give them another 5 minutes, but don’t overdo it. (Oh, and don’t try sticking a skewer in and seeing if it comes out clean – it should never come clean out of a brownie.)

When the brownies are cool, cut them into squares, and enjoy.

Oh, and if any break coming out of the tin, like a couple of my last batch did, you could try this:  put them aside until dinner time, then warm them up – 30 seconds in the microwave will do it – and serve with ice cream and toffee sauce. (For toffee sauce, melt 100g butter and 100g dark brown sugar together in a pan. When they have both melted, add 200ml double cream, stir, and let the sauce bubble away for 5 minutes or so.)

You can also experiment: sprinkle over white chocolate chunks, add dried cherries (not glace) to the mixture, substitute coconut for half of the flour, try milk chocolate, add nuts…. go wild.

Happy baking!