Cooking with love and the best brownie recipe

We cook for so many reasons: to appease hunger, to tantalise the tastebuds, sometimes for money, sometimes to feed others, and to express love.

I have been cooking for my grandmother recently (one of my astonishing duo of 100-year-old grandmothers) which has prompted my thoughts about the last of these. Until her health declined a few months ago she would make me rice pudding every time I visited, remembering that it was my favourite dessert as a child. Even after she largely stopped cooking she still found the energy to make rice pudding for me, and I was always touched by it, even the time she forgot the sugar.

Now I'm cooking for her, at least temporarily. A 100-year-old has different expectations from other people I might cook for, although to be fair, she is adventurous and eats almost everything, and will tuck into pizza as willingly as meat and two veg. Still, I try to tailor my dishes towards her preferences. She likes pudding with every meal, which is probably not doing my waistline any good. I admire her appetite: one lunchtime she had pate on toast, then requested toast and honey, and then rounded it off with a creation that seems to be a new favourite of hers: a chopped banana, ice-cream and jam, all mixed together. Taking pleasure in food is a way of finding joy in daily life, so this is good to see.

I take a little pride in cooking everything from scratch (well, except the ice-cream). I hope she will taste the difference and also feel my love in the finished product. In my day job I was lucky enough to interview former Olympian Kriss Akabusi a few months ago, and some words of his come back to mind now. "I can't cook without thinking about the people I am cooking for and my love for them. When you cook for someone it is quite an intimate thing," he said.

As for my grandmother, I have just baked chocolate brownies for her - a recipe I like to think of as one of my specialities, and the one I turn to when I want something indulgent. "Very good brownies," she said. "You can tell they're made with real chocolate." We had them warm from the oven with ice-cream, but there is plenty left to have with a cup of tea tomorrow. A pleasure in itself, and a double pleasure to know your effort has been appreciated.

Here's the recipe. I measure the sugar and flour in a jug rather than scales, hence the choice of measurements.

Chocolate and hazelnut brownies

175g/ 6oz dark chocolate, at least 70% cocoa solids (I used Green and Black's)
175g/ 6oz butter
350ml / 1 1/2 cups flour (I used self-raising because that's what there was, but probably half plain and half self-raising would be ideal, or all plain and just a tiny pinch of baking powder)
350ml / 1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
120g/ 4oz chopped hazelnuts (feel free to use walnuts or pecans if you prefer)

Melt the butter and chocolate together over a very low heat. You might prefer to use a bain-marie if you are of a nervous disposition, as chocolate burns very easily. Or you can microwave but only in very short bursts, stirring each time.

Beat the eggs and sugar with an electric whisk until light and fluffy. Fold in the flour and then the chocolate mixture and the nuts. Put in a greased tin (I used two small baking tins, but it partly depends how thick you want your brownie) and bake at 180C /350F. Cooking time is the tricky thing, as ovens are quite variable and it depends on the type of tin you use. It should be cracked round the edges, slightly risen and fairly dry on top. The trouble with brownies is that all the sugar means they are quite soft when they come out of the oven, however cooked they are. So there is a bit of trial and error - I have more than once had to put them back in the oven even after they have cooled, when I realised they were not cooked in the middle. Don't overcook, though - you need a moist, gooey centre. To my mind there's nothing worse than a dry, crumbly brownie.