I'm a huge fan of chocolate brownies, I'm also very particular about them.  So often we get sold things under the guise of Brownie when what we get is a firm, dry chocolate sponge.  That is not a brownie.  Brownie should be thick, dense, moist and a wonderful marriage of gooey meets crumbly.

I was craving cake something chronic yesterday.  I had my chocolate head on and nothing else would do.  So I decided to make this messy, indulgent, filthily calorific concoction.  If chocolate had sex, this would be the orgasm.

Being dairy free and egg free should perhaps make me somewhat healthier in my approach to food.  That's utter bollocks though.  It just means you sulk more and work twice as hard to find crap you can eat.  One of these little gems is, bourbon biscuits!  (Generally supermarket own brand versions of these are both egg and dairy free)  So to make up for all the things I can't eat, I end up finding something I can eat and then proceed to eat four times more of that.  A few years ago I made some delicious Oreo cupcakes.  I don't have any Oreos but I do have Bourbon Creams.....

3 Ingredient, dairy free & egg free, Chocolate Goo.

I'm aware that the blog is long overdue a Moomin update, I will rectify this soon, she's 10 months old now!  I will however tell you that currently Moomin and I are dairy free and egg free.  For a dairy junkie like myself this is a nightmare.  I seem to spend my time swinging between abject misery in emo territory and furiously Googling all the naughty things a dairy whore like me can eat.  When everything from supermarket sorbet (yes, really) to emergency Pot Noodles contain milk.  Not only are many dairy free and egg free items twice the price they're only half the taste, if you're lucky.  Cardboard infused with nettles.  You get my drift?

I did find an on-line recipe for vegan chocolate mousse,  Google seduced me with it's promises of sheer indulgent chocolate heaven.  It wooed me with suggestive sweet whispers that you can't taste the avocado.  It....lied.  Yes.  Lied.  All I could taste was avocado.  I couldn't even finish it.  Don't even get me started on the liquid evil that is soy milk.

Priorities first, chocolate and ice cream.

This is where the 3 Ingredient chocolate goo comes into play, it's dairy free and egg free.  I shit you not.  It's easy peasy and incredibly quick to make too.

Easter

Don't get me wrong, I'm known to go a little mad at Xmas but Easter I just don't get. It's always been somewhat of a none event to me. As a child I'd get the obligatory egg from The Parents and we'd have a nice dinner yet that was about the extent of it. Relatives would send us some money as a treat as being several hundred miles away made it rather difficult to send copious amounts of chocolate. Even the chocolate eggs from the parents dried up in early teens.

These days is frightfully competitive with parents spending obnoxious amounts of money on what is essentially chocolate. Eggs, treats, sweets, cakes hell even kiddy hampers! Then add the outfits and intricately planned and executed events and activities.

I don't get it.

At least with birthdays and Christmas it's a variety of stuff we spoil them with. We like chocolate. Hell, we love chocolate. It's not coveted nor rare in this house. Yet I feel uncomfortable having for all intent purposes a chocolate day. They either glutton on it all day and feel rightfully sick or else we can ration it out over a week or so and it becomes expected.

We buy each child one cheap egg. Some years they've also had those small hollow ones for a hunt. The grandparents and one of their Uncle's also buy them an egg. That's it. Anything else seems superfluous and unnecessary. I'm not being a Grinch, not at all. It's not the treat element i'm against rather the fact it's all just chocolate.

I was all for hiding Moshlings and football stickers in small plastic eggs yet The Husband preferred to just get them a small obligatory egg and that be the end of it.

And it was. For Him. Bloody fool that I am,I made the mistake last year of doing a spare of the moment impromptu egg hunt with clues. Predictably the little cretins wanted a repeat performance this year. Balls.

So there I was, 10am Easter morning eyeballing my water trying to Jesus it into vodka whilst plotting spousiside and The Spawn descend on me. Arse

My brain was away for the bank holiday so I resorted to a code. If you're doing a code it really is rather helpful if you don't use the more extravagant symbols for letters that appear frequently in the clues. I never want to draw another bunny head. Ever.

That was about the pinnacle event of the day. A lack lustre, last minute, around the house egg hunt. That lasted about fifteen minutes. Oh and a roast chicken dinner that nearly didn't happen as I forgot to take the clucking thing out of the freezer the night before.

That was Easter.

Maybe we're just miserable bastards. After all back holidays, St whatsit days, New Year etc all get overlooked here. The Husband is the main culprit, I think he's allergic to celebration full stop. He doesn't even like Christmas. Bah Humbug.

In fact no maybe about it. We are certifiable miserable bastards!

The Bad Mother's Handbook: how to successfully steal your child's chocolate.

Easter loot is much easier to store if you get rid of all the excess packaging and break up the eggs into bite size pieces.  These can then be stored along with the sweets etc in zip lock bags or tupperware tubs.  Write each child's name on their bag to avoid war breaking out.  

The other bonus of storing them like this is that you can routinely pinch their loot and they rarely realise.  It's not as obvious when pieces from a whole bag of pieces go missing. Likewise it's harder to keep track of how much should be in there.  Win!

I believe is terribly important that children learn valuable life lessons so also use easter as an opportunity to introduce the notion of tax under the notion of chocolate tax. Thus every time a child earns some chocolate it's your responsibility to tax it. Essentially they have to hand over some of their chocolate before they can eat some. 

Of course we're only thinking of their teeth. Honest. 

Fairy GodsMother

Despite being a rampant heathen, The Toddler has a Fairy GodsMother. She is a wonderfully creative, clever, thoughtful, funny, beautiful and generous friend who quite frankly spoils him (& me) rotten.

Thankyou for giving us both a much needed smile this morning. Thing Two was quite giddy that we had a pink parcel.

One day The Husband and I will manage another holiday down there and I'll finally get to meet you.