Toasted Muesli, or, breakfast pic’n’mix

Apparently eating breakfast every day is good for you. I wake up in a vague stupor that is barely nudged out of the way by stovetop espresso (no Nescafe here, natch, I’m a postgrad!) so I find breakfast eating a total drag. Pancakes are great and all but not really suitable for everyday consumption unless you have lots of time every morning and have no problem with living in elasticated pants. I gave up on eating toast as it usually happened in the car and I’d get messy and have to stash a toothbrush in my office. As a kid the only cereal my parents could force down me was muesli (I lived in a no sugar on your weetbix household, gross), and so it remains today.

Most bought cereals are full of all sorts of crap or, in the case of one that rhymes with Must Bite, made up of the floor sweepings and dregs left over from other cereals. By making your own muesli you can ensure that you’re not eating rejects for breakfast, while also tailoring it to your particular taste and budget. Nuts and the like are very expensive, but can be replaced with things like seeds and fruit, or you could go all ascetic and have nothing extra at all. Making this sort of thing in quantity still works out significantly cheaper than bought stuff, and if you’re well prepared you can cook it whilst using the oven to cook dinner or bake. You can also experiment with different juices and spices – ginger, lemon, dried cranberry and yoghurt covered raisin muesli? Goodbye, Mr Hubbard, I have a new breakfast boyfriend, and have spent all my student allowance on dried fruit.

Addendum: you may have noticed that the layout fairies have been doing funny things to some of the recipes – for instance, you actually have to cook banana bread, and you don’t need 13 cups of milk to make pancakes. For full, accurate recipes, go to my blog – uckai.blogspot.com – and avert culinary disaster.

An incredibly inexact recipe for toasted muesli

• A roasting dish – eg a 9x12” one, the sort the supermarket sells
• Oats
• Coconut
• Nuts of your choosing: slivered almonds, chopped peanuts, hazelnuts, etc – but not walnuts, they burn
• Seeds of your choosing: sunflower, sesame, pumpkin, linseed
• Honey or golden syrup
• Oil (canola, vegetable)
• An orange
• Cinnamon
• Dried fruit of your choosing: raisins, sultanas, chopped apricots, chopped dates

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Fill the roasting dish one third full with the oats. Add a few handfuls of coconut and your nuts and seeds – but you don’t want to fill the dish more than just over half full. Grate the zest off the orange and add to the oats. Chop the orange in half and squeeze over the juice. Add a liberal tablespoonful of cinnamon.

Pour about 75 ml oil and 75ml honey / syrup into a glass bowl or jug. Microwave it very slowly (eg in 10 second bursts) until it is warm enough to combine with a stir. Pour it evenly over the muesli and stir it about until everything is coated evenly. Bake in the oven, stirring every 5 – 10 minutes to let it cook evenly. Keep an eye on it otherwise it will burn. When the muesli is turning a lovely golden colour, remove it from the oven and let it cool – don’t let it go too far or you’ll break a tooth when you come to eat it. When it is cold, stir through the dried fruit and store it in an airtight container.

A word about being flexible: this is a very inaccurate recipe because I am firmly of the belief that if you follow the recipe correctly every time, nothing interesting happens. A friend of mine can’t deal with things if she is missing just one ingredient in a recipe, but substitutions make for wonderful and sometimes bizarre surprises, and stop you from going back to the supermarket and ‘accidentally’ buying $10 worth of ice cream. Become at one with your kitchen and develop your pantry ninja skills, you can usually make do.

Fluffy pancakes, or, carbo-loading at the start of the day

Holidays! Late nights. Leisurely sleep ins. Spending all day in your PJs (more than usual). Calling in sick cos you drank too much after handing in your last piece of assessment. Calling in sick to go to the mountains. Cleaning the house for the first time five months. Indulging in ‘projects’ that mess up the property and necessitate trips to Creative Junk. Cooked breakfasts. COOKED BREAKFASTS.

So. You brought that hottie lab partner home. They didn’t walk out the door upon seeing the things growing on the bathroom wall, the Ben 10 action figures on the window and the giant cut out of Rodney Hide, his eyes gouged out with a biro, wearing a feather boa. You cooked them a steak dinner, as elucidated by CANTA (good effort). Your kitchen prowess made them all warm and squiggly on the inside and after a romantic dessert of jellytips and / or chocolate vigeur – fade out to black, fade in – it’s the next morning. Time to seal the deal.

Fluffy pancakes

Makes about 6 in an 8” frying pan, depending on your preferred level of thickness

Dry ingredients:

• 1 ¼ cups flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
•  ½ teaspoon salt

Wet ingredients:

• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 1/3 cups milk (or soy milk)
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil (eg canola)

Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl – give them a quick whisk to make sure they are mixed properly and that the flour isn’t lumpy, or use a sieve. Combine the wet ingredients in a smaller bowl and whisk to combine. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients – give the mixture a quick whisk to combine (it won’t take much) and let it sit for a couple of minutes.

Heat up your frying pan and add a knob of butter – splash a few drops of water into the pan, and when they sizzle and dance you’re ready to go. Pour in the batter (messier) or drop it in with a ladle (cleaner), then tilt the pan until it’s all even. When the outside edges are looking set and the centre is looking bubbly, flip your pancake over to finish cooking. Slide the pancake out onto a plate and cover it with foil (unless you’re eating as you go) and start again.

You will need to figure out how well behaved your stovetop is – we have gas so the heat is distributed pretty evenly, but I’ve had ovens that don’t seem to see the difference between a gentle heat and a raging inferno. Keep an eye on your pancakes - your mileage may vary.

Extras for experts: You can add a big handful stuff (such as frozen blueberries or redcurrants, or chocolate chips, or grated cheese) to the batter just before you start to cook the pancake. There is also lots of fun to be had with dividing the mix in two, flavouring (maple cinnamon anyone?) or colouring one of portions, and then pouring the two lots of batter into the pan in a big swirl, blobby circles, or a vaguely marbled.pattern. Fancy pants.

Berry sauce

Feel like a topping? Prepare this earlier and keep in the fridge or freezer. It’s also lovely on ice cream or cheesecake.

• 1 cup water
• 1 cup sugar (white is good, caster is better)
• 3 cups of berries (frozen is fine)
• Cornflour or arrowroot

Combine the water and sugar in a small saucepan, preferably heavy-bottomed. Heat it slowly, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Turn up the heat a notch and bring to a slow boil, letting it boil for 5 minutes. Add the berries and simmer for 5 minutes (plus another minute or so if using frozen berries), stirring frequently. Turn the heat right down. Combine 1 tablespoon cornflour and 1 tablespoon water in a small bowl until you have a thick paste. Add it to the saucepan, stirring well. Do it again if you would like a thicker sauce – bearing in mind that the sauce will also thicken upon cooling. Remove from the heat. If you are planning on freezing or refrigerating it, let it cool to room temperature before transferring it to another container.

A word about mixing: when it comes to things with lots of flour, such as pancakes, cakes, or muffins, be careful that you only mix things up enough that they are combined. Otherwise your lovely baked goods will be tough and chewy, and nobody likes it when their breakfast bounces.

Steak - aka a big bit of cow v2.0

It’s Mr Longbean’s birthday! This is code for ‘it’s time to have something other than beans on toast for dinner’. For the omnivores amongst us, the excuses for a flash steak dinner are legion: a new special friend whom you are trying to impress; a successful assignment; marking the failure of first year calculus for the second year in a row; graduation; make ups; break ups (table for one); earthquake days when the only available heat source is the barbecue; meat parties after a raffle win at the local tavern; the decision to drop out of uni and become an adventurer for hire. Almost any occasion is a steak occasion, unless you don’t like eating things with faces, in which case, awkward.

Lovely steak

One lovely bit of steak

Olive oil

Salt, pepper (optional)

Let your steak sit at room temperature for a good half hour to hour. Put a bowl over it if the cat is getting nosy. Rinse it and pat it dry with a paper towel. Select a sturdy pan. If you have a proper cast iron skillet, then immediately award yourself a gold star. Brush it or wipe it gently with a bit of oil. Heat it up as hot as you can, until either the oil begins to smoke, or until a few droplets of water hiss when thrown onto the hot surface.

Wipe or brush the steak on both sides with a little bit of oil and, immediately before you put it in the pan, season it with a tiny bit of salt and pepper – if you leave it for too long, the salt will draw out some of the lovely juices (in fact there is even argument as to whether you should to this at all). Throw it in the pan and listen to that lovely sizzle. Open a window or turn on the extractor, things will get smoky.

While you can find cooking times easily online or in a cookbook, given the variety of thicknesses of steak, especially when getting them from somewhere other than the discount bin of the supermarket, it can be more accurate to judge with your eye. For a medium rare steak, wait until red juices are beginning to form droplets on the top of the steak, then turn it, then remove it from the heat when droplets form on that side too – on our hob this is about 4 minutes per side. For medium, wait until the droplets are pink and beginning to pool before turning. For well done, the bane of the grill cook and an insult to expensive cuts, wait until the juices are pooling and almost clear, then punch yourself in the face.

Once you have removed the steak from the heat, place it on a warmed plate and let it sit for at least 10 minutes. You might like to set the oven to its lowest temperature (usually about 50C) and put it inthere. Resting the meat is a rule, not an option, and can be an extreme test of willpower. 

Pro tips:

• Don’t turn a steak more than once. Only sneak a peek on its underside if you think it might be charring and, if so, turn down the heat a bit. Otherwise, don’t prod it, don’t poke it, don’t don’t wiggle it or press it down. If you do, all the steak magic will disappear and you will only have yourself to blame. 
• Steak with the bone in takes somewhat longer to cook than without. 
• More tender cuts, like fillet (filet mignon), take a little less time than sturdier cuts like a ribeye. 
• Steaks ‘marbled’ with fat taste the best, so stop checking the calories on everything
• Don’t use stewing steak or anything that needs a slow cooker. The great chef in the sky will weep tears of béarnaise sauce and you will be cast out of the meat eater’s heaven to endure forty days and nights of water crackers and light beer.

Serve with something classy such as potato rosti, sautéed leeks and mushrooms and a sturdy shiraz blend, or, at a pinch, a scoop of chips, a sprig of parsley and a Speight’s Old Dark.

A word about pans: a good skillet will last you a lifetime. It is also good as a self defence item in case of home invasion or overly zealous drunken flatmate mistakenly coma-ing on your bed with you still in it.

Monday. Baking Day.*

It's sleeting, there's eight inches of snow outside, and my giant snow head is looking increasingly like the Toxic Avenger or the guy with half his brain on the outside in Total Recall. The pub across the road is closed, so our options are limited to do work, study, or bake. Or watch Rachael Ray. Bake it is.

I think that lots of people can't or don't bake because they are put off by that one time in Year 9 when everyone in home ec had to make muffins and they were awful, and they were awful because there is a good deal of terminology and lots of sneaky insider tips that aren't always made explicit. Hopefully these recipes are a bit easier to decipher. Like most baking, they boil down to add wet stuff in Bowl B into dry stuff in Bowl A, mix just enough to combine the two, and then cook (and lick the bowl).

* Dear advertising people: I would love to have this TV ad back again. That and the ones about hairy, garish, mannish Marge.

For the baking impaired: Golden Flapjacks

If an ANZAC biscuit and a muesli slice had sweet sexy times, then this would be the offspring. This recipe requires no special secret baking knowledge.

Bowl A (Dry)
1 cup rolled oats
¾ cup white flour
½ cup coconut
1 cup soft brown sugar, packed down
½ cup chopped dried fruit, like dates or apricots (optional)
1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)

Bowl B (Wet)
125 g butter
3 tablespoons of golden or maple syrup (a bastard to measure; I usually guesstimate)
1 tablespoon water
½ teaspoon baking soda

Preheat the oven to 160°C. Line an 8 x 8 inch baking dish with baking paper – or you can just grease the dish and risk it. In a large bowl (Bowl A) combine the dry mix ingredients and make a little well in the middle. Put the butter, the golden syrup and the water in a saucepan (Bowl B) and heat gently, stirring occasionally, until everything has completely melted together – alternatively, do this in the microwave. Add the baking soda to the butter mix then stir until it's dissolved and somewhat frothed up, which will help the slice rise a little. Pour the wet stuff into the dry stuff and mix thoroughly – it can get a little dense, you may like to use your hands.

Press the mix into the prepared dish and bake for 35 – 40 minutes. It will wobble a little when you pull it out but will settle down once it sets. Good wrapped up in individual bits and stored in the freezer for school lunches, just like your Mum used to do.

For those who like licking the beaters: Banana Bread


I like this recipe because we never have milk in the house but there are always a couple of dodgy bananas. This also tastes very good the next day.

Bowl A (Dry)
2 cups self-raising flour (or 2 cups plain flour + 2 teaspoons baking powder)
1 teaspoon mixed spice or cinnamon

Bowl B (Wet)
150g butter
1 cup soft brown sugar, packed down
2 eggs
2 sad bananas, mashed

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line a large loaf tin with baking paper, or grease it up and hope for the best. Combine the flour and the mixed spice in a large bowl (Bowl A). Make a little well in the middle. All this baking is exhausting, have a wine – hello, Countdown Wine Sale.

In a medium sized bowl (Bowl B), soften the butter in the microwave – go slow, you don't want it melty. Add the brown sugar to the butter and using an electric beater (or your impressive Popeye arms) cream the butter by whipping it on a high speed until it looks fluffy and has turned lighter in colour. Add one egg, beat thoroughly; do it again. Add the banana and mix everything up thoroughly.

Tip the contents of Bowl B into Bowl A and mix slowly but thoroughly – this will be a very thick mixture. Blob it into the prepared loaf tin. Bake for 35 minutes, then pull it out and stick it with a skewer or a sharp knife – if it comes out clean, you're good. Otherwise, stick it back in the oven for another 5 or 10 minutes. Let it cool before you slice it or it will crumble everywhere, what a waste.

I can never let well enough along so I tend to top loaves or muffins like this with a sugary sprinkle – in a small bowl combine 1 tablespoon of granulated sugar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, a little bit of lemon zest and some very finely chopped or ground nuts and sprinkle over the top of the loaf before you cook it.

A word about bananas: Sad bananas can be stored in the freezer and are good for loaves and muffins. The skins will go a horrible dark brown, but the insides will be wonderfully mushy. If you are of the opinion that eating animal products is bad, mmkay, mashed banana can be used as a binder instead of eggs in cakes and breads – use half a mashed banana per egg, plus ¼ teaspoon of baking powder if you want something a little fluffier.

The way of the toastie, or, a meal greater than the sum of its parts

In the senior common room at my high school the toastie maker held pride of place. It was a fetching 70s burnt orange, thick with desiccated cheese meltings, and had lost its non-stick surface, flake by tasty flake, years ago. Arguments ensued as to whether it was acceptable to use canned spaghetti as a filling as the gross tomato sauce got stuck to everything, including the handle, and could only be removed with steel wool. In winter, if you didn’t get in early to use the toastie maker, you were stuck without lunch until your next free period or had to suffice yourself with whatever tepid pie-related product was left at the tuck shop. In summer, it would start to smell and we’d all get kicked out until we promised to keep the common room clean, Miss. This was all Very Serious Business.

 I did a quick ask around recently to find out people’s favourite toastie concoctions, be they made in a machine, or with a toastie press, or in a frying pan as below. Perhaps you might like to try:

• The Sunday Roast – roast meat, smooshed up roast vegetables, a dollop of gravy, quince jelly or mint jelly and lots of pepper on wheat bread
• The King – bacon, peanut butter, banana and maple syrup
• The Dad – cheese, chopped and drained pineapple, chutney (chow chow, piccalilli) and a side of bad jokes
• The Primary School Holidays Special – baked beans and grated cheese on white bread with a big glass of Fanta on the side
• The Hilary – gouda and thinly sliced pear, dipped in something nice like aioli with a sprig of parsley, because parsley makes everything fancy
• The Willy Wonka (with apologies to Katherine C’A, whose adventures in extreme toastie making cannot be surpassed) – confectionary of your choice, for instance, Creme Eggs, eskimos, candy or K bars

.... or you could just have a two course toastie meal?

The Americano

This is the original – bread, cheese and butter. If you like appliances, use a sandwich press or Panini maker 

rather than a frying pan.

• White bread
• Actual, proper butter
• Cheese(s) of your liking – a sharp cheddar is good

Butter the bread. If you like extra flavour, put a scraping of mustard or mayonnaise on the non-buttered side of the bread. Slice the cheese thinly. Warm up a frying pan, adding a bit of butter if it’s non-stick (or if you just really like butter). Place a slice of bread butter side down in the pan, arrange the cheese pleasingly on top, and put the last bit of bread on top, butter side up. Cook on a low temperature so that the cheese melts but the butter doesn’t burn. Chop it into triangles, serve with a big slice of pickled gherkin, a little toothpick flag stuck in the bread and one of those paper napkins with red and white checks.

The Dessert Toastie

This is best made in a proper toastie maker so that all the lovely squidgy bits stay inside.

• Bread – white or cinnamon
• Cream cheese
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• A liberal sprinkle of cinnamon
• A sad banana
• Chocolate chips
•  Red jam – plum, raspberry or similar – or a few frozen berries

Butter the bread. Mix the cream cheese (amount of your choosing, depending on how much you care about your weight) with the sugar and cinnamon. Mash the banana with a fork, and stir through the chocolate chips. On the unbuttered side of one slice of bread spread the cream cheese, the fill with the banana goop, and put a little dollop of jam or a few frozen berries on top. Cook to the desired level of crunchiness.

A word about hot things: hot toasties burn. Molten cheese draped across your lower lip is a less than ideal situation. Even worse are the burns you get when you heat up sugary items beyond their usual level of tolerance – eg, jam. Go slow, don’t be greedy and definitely don’t overfill, and you will emerge whole and unscathed.

Winter soups, or, something that’s good for what ails you

Having spent the vast majority of the university holidays sick – how unfair is that - I have eaten very little except for soup, because soup is easy to make and cheap and good for the soul and with enough chilli and onion will kick the crap out of whatever is living in your chest and head. NB: Chicken Soup for the Soul is not very good for the soul or the temper, but quite good at propping up the ad-hoc media centre when the earthquakes have left your house on a lean. Did you know they have trademarked the term “where people come to help people”? Self help books make me want to spew.

Soup, especially soup of the ‘throw it in a pot and leave it for a bit’ variety, is helpful on winter nights or afternoons when you need to heat up the house and the belly. It freezes very well, which is handy when it is far too cold to cook and the prospect of Big Gary’s for the third night in a row is a bit daunting. 

Protip 1 – if you add lots of things like lentils or barley, keep an eye on the pot as they will absorb lots of water and may end up burning on the bottom. When left overnight, the pulses with swell up and leave you with gloopy stew so upon reheating you might need to add more water.  

Protip 2 - if you over-salt the soup, you can somewhat fix things by adding grated or diced potato, or by adding a little sugar or acid (vinegar, lemon juice) to balance out the flavour.  

Protip 3 – for those of you who are super lazy, the cheap packets of King brand soup mix, with the addition of frozen vegetables, will feed a flat for less than $5.

Hearty beef stew

500g cheap stewing steak, sometimes delightfully called ‘gravy beef’

2 onions

1 carrot

2 sticks of celery

1 small swede OR 2 big potatoes

1 medium parsnip

¼ cup barley, rice or lentils (uncooked)

1 litre stock OR 1 litre of water + 2 stock cubes of your choosing

1 or 2 bayleaves (optional)

Chop the meat into 2cm cubes. Trim off all the fat and any gristly bits and throw them away – seriously, they’re gross and add nothing to a good stew experience. Wash and, if you can be bothered, peel the carrot, swede (or potatoes), and parsnip. Chop all the veggies into whatever sizes or shapes you think are nicest. Dump everything into a pot. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 1 ½ hours or until the meat is nice and tender. Make sure you don’t boil the crap out of it the whole time or the meat with go chewy and yuck instead of tender and lovely.

Curried pumpkin soup

500g (ish) pumpkin – add more for a thicker soup

2 onions

2 cloves of garlic

2 T butter or oil

2 t cumin

2T red curry paste

1 can coconut cream or milk

1 litre stock OR 1 litre water and 2 stock cubes

Peanut butter (optional)

Remove the skin and seeds from the pumpkin. You will need to do this with a knife, not a peeler. If you have a terrible knife you will now want to take a break to nurse your blisters and the bit of finger you just chopped off. Chop the flesh roughly into cubes. Peel and slice the onions and garlic. 

Heat the butter or oil in your soup pot, then cook the onions, garlic, cumin and curry paste gently until the onions have started to soften. Throw in the pumpkin, stir it around for a minute, then add the coconut stuff and the milk. Bring to the boil then simmer gently until the pumpkin is tender.

When it’s ready, add a massive spoon of peanut butter and stir until it has become one with the soup – it will bring out the nice nutty flavour of the pumpkin. Take the pot off the heat then mash the crap out of it with a masher, or zap it with a stick blender – be careful though, you don’t want the nurses laughing at you when you arrive at the 24 Hour Surgery with molten orange goop on your face. Return it to the heat, taste it, add more curry paste or cumin if you want, then keep it warm until you serve it.

A word about bastard pumpkins: Taking the skin off a pumpkin is a nightmare with a crappy knife. A sneaky solution to this is to remove the seeds, pierce the skin a bit with your knife, then microwave the pumpkin for 3 - 5 minutes. This should make life much easier. Pumpkin seeds also grow very well – throw them on a compost heap and chances are in a few months you will have a bounteous supply.

Mulled Wine and Brownies – or, distraction from the base realities of a Christchurch winter

Congratulations on making it through what must be the worst assessment period and most hotly anticipated holiday period in UC history. By now, you will have had time to realise that your student flat isn’t all it was (ever?) cracked up to be – mouldy wardrobes, windows that don’t quite shut ever, and appalling hot water pressure. The earthquakes have no doubt buggered up any intention you had of lighting the fire, never mind those massive holes in the plaster. My personal low – waking up in the middle of the night because the condensation had frozen to the inside of the window and then fallen onto my duvet and was slowly melting onto my legs. Good times. I’m not quite sure why living in a damp, musty Petri dish is considered a rite of passage but there you go, hopefully our immune systems are better for it.

Consider these some winter warmers to be enjoyed by the dusky light of a two bar heater as you wear your polarfleece onesie and fingerless mitts and wrap yourself in your poly-fill Warehouse duvet, wishing that you had never told your Mum and Dad that you were independent enough to go flatting but would still to be sent a monthly Pak’n’Save voucher please. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that lighting a roll your own cigarette off the heater element isn’t all class.

Mulled wine

This is like sangria for wintertime, and another good example of kitchen bucket chemistry. You can make it however you like (at home the recipe depends on what’s in the cupboard) but here’s a good place to start. Mulled wine doesn’t have to be drunk all at once (honest) – if you leave it out overnight, or drain off the wine and store it in the fridge, it’s reheated quickly in the microwave or on the stovetop. Just don’t ever turn the heat up too high – you don’t want to boil the alcohol off, do you?

• 2 bottles (1.5 litres) of cheap, full-bodied red wine (eg shiraz, merlot or cab sav, or dodgy cask stuff)
• 2 oranges, juiced then chopped
• Peel of 1 lemon
• Two sticks of cinnamon
• 1 cup of sugar (the darker the better)
• 5 - 10 whole cloves (optional)

Easy but longer version for people who have a tendency to forget what’s on the stove: Throw everything in a big pot. Heat gently, without boiling, for at least half an hour. Taste, and add more things if you feel like it – you may need more sugar, I’ve been a bit stingy in the above list as if it’s oversweetened it’s a bit rank and hard to undo. Serve. Easy.

Slightly more labour intensive but quicker and nicer version: throw everything except for the wine in a pot. Add just enough red wine to cover the sugar. Heat it gently until the sugar has completely dissolved, then turn up the heat and boil for 3 or 4 minutes. Turn down the heat, add the rest of the wine and heat gently without boiling for 5 or 10 minutes.

Other spices that you can use in a mulled wine include star anise, whole white or black peppercorns, allspice, pieces of ginger and / or a couple of bay leaves. Chai or orange herbal teabags are good too.

Mug Brownie

More like your soft, squishy American brownie than anything firm and slice-y, these totally eliminate the need to wash up any bowls and spoons.

• 4 tablespoons plain flour
• 4 tablespoons sugar (any type, but darker = richer)
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder (the baking stuff, not the hot chocolate stuff)
• a pinch of salt
• 2 tablespoons oil (eg sunflower, canola, nothing too strong tasting)
• 2 tablespoons water
• ¼ teaspoon vanilla essence (optional)

In a mug, combine the flour, sugar, cocoa powder and salt with a fork. Make a little well in the centre add the water, oil and essence. Mix it all up thoroughly, making sure there are no dry bits or lumps. Microwave it on high for a minute; you may need to go longer depending on your microwave, but you want it to be wettish in the middle. Let it sit for a couple of minutes, then nom.

Extra for experts – swap out the vanilla essence for something else, like peppermint essence or a tiny bit of orange peel. Or, add a few (a FEW) chocolate chips to the mix before cooking. Or, splash some milk or cream over the cooked brownie. I have heard tell that experiments with peanut butter or nutella can end well. And so on.

A word about measuring stuff: Although I’m sure someone along the line told you, it’s worth reiterating that when measuring dry ingredients you need to make sure that the measurement is level. Add four heaped tablespoons of flour to the brownie and you are likely to end up with chocolatey playdough or a smouldering heap of brown, nice-smelling glue.