Can I Make A Smaller Amount Of The Brownies Recipe?

Our answer

Nigella's recipe for Brownies (from HOW TO BE A DOMESTIC GODDESS) makes up to 48 bite-size brownies or a smaller number of larger brownie bars. The brownies are baked in a 33x 23cm (9x13-inch) pan. Scaling down cake recipes is not always straightforward, but fortunately a square 20x20cm (8x8-inch) pan is about half of the capacity of the rectangular pan, so you should need a half quantity of the ingredients. Make sure that the square pan is not too shallow, you need a depth of at least 5cm (2 inches).

The baking time for a half quantity is slightly more difficult to judge and is usually 2/3 to 3/4 of the regular baking time, which would suggest a baking time of 15-18 minutes. You don't want to over bake brownies, so we suggest checking at 15 minutes and then every 3 minutes after that. For squidgy brownies, a cake tester inserted into the centre should come out with damp crumbs attached but not raw batter. However, please note that as we have not tried a scaled-down version of the recipe ourselves, we are unable to guarantee the results.