Bake Sale Favourites-Mary Berry's Chocolate Chip Brownies and Nigella Lawson's Rocky Road Crunch Bars

Last Friday a few of my friends and I held a bake sale for BBC Children in Need-We somehow managed to raise £210-much more than expected. We made sure that everyone was allocated certain bakes to make; I was allocated rocky road and chocolate brownies. Luckily for me these are two of my family favourites which I make all of the time. Naturally I chose to use my two favourite recipes-Chocolate Chip Brownies from the Mary Berry Baking Bible and Rocky Road Crunch Bars which I found on Nigella Lawson's website (www.nigela.com). Just to be clear I made 70 brownies and 40 rocky road bars and they were all sold out in 20 minutes! I didn't even get to eat one myself :(. Enjoy these or else!

Rocky Road:
Makes 24

125 grams soft butter

300 grams best-quality dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids) broken into pieces

3 tablespoons golden syrup

200 grams rich tea biscuits

100 grams mini marshmallows

2 teaspoons icing sugar (for dusting)

Melt the butter, chocolate and golden syrup in a heavy-based saucepan. Scoop out about 125ml / ½ cup of this melted mixture and put to one side.

Put the biscuits into a freezer bag and then bash them with a rolling pin. You are aiming for both crumbs and pieces of biscuits.

Fold the biscuit pieces and crumbs into the melted chocolate mixture in the saucepan, and then add the marshmallows.

Tip into a foil tray (24cm / 9 inch square); flatten as best you can with a spatula. Pour the reserved 125ml / ½ cup of melted chocolate mixture over the marshmallow mixture and smooth the top.

Refrigerate for about 2 hours or overnight.

Cut into 24 fingers and dust with icing sugar by pushing it gently through a tea strainer or small sieve.

Chocolate Chip Brownies:

These brownies are super simple and cheap to make and the amount made at once can be doubled or tripled (this is what I did to get the quantity I needed). Makes 24

275g softened butter

375g caster sugar

4 large eggs

75g cocoa powder

100g self raising flour

100g plain chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C/Gas 4.

Line a 30x23cm tray bake or roasting tin.

Weigh all of the ingredients in a bowl and mix until just combined.

Scrape all of the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 40-45 minutes.