We were invited to a picnic on Sunday afternoon, to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I decided to make some brownies, and some focaccia, and we took fruit, cheese, cold meat, beer, as well. The weather was not delightful, but a pleasant time was had.

But oh dear – I came close to disaster with the brownies … I used this Nigella recipe, from her Domestic Goddess book, one of the few which lives in the kitchen, rather than on the dining room bookshelves.

I have these whizzy electronic scales, where you can push a button to switch between oz, ml, g, fl oz, etc. I weighed out the butter, and thought “that looks an awful lot”, then weighed out as much chocolate as I had, which was nowhere near 325g, but no matter – I could and did bung some cocoa powder in with the flour. I put butter and chocolate in a pan, then into a *bigger* pan, started it melting, and returned to the weighing of ingredients. And realised that the scales were on ml instead of g! Nothing to be done but soldier on – when the mix was melted, I just weighed out 750g of it, and decanted the rest into a jug. It’s currently in the fridge, and moar! brownies! will be made later this week.

So no great hassle, really, but it could have gone horribly wrong if I hadn’t noticed. But they were delicious – I sprinkled some flakes almonds on the top before they were cooked, just because really, and dusted them with icing sugar before they went to the party.