Method
1. Preheat oven to 180°. Gently melt the butter and cocoa over low heat on the stove. Add the brown sugar and keep heating gently and stir it til its all one melty chocolatey mess.

2. Remove from heat and stir in the egg and vanilla essence til it all looks smooth and glossy.

3. Gradually add in the flour. Stir it up to buggery and taste numerous times to make sure it's okay.

4. Taste again, just to be sure.

5. Pour the lot into a tin lined with greaseproof paper. Doesn't matter what shape the tin it is.

6. Whack it in the oven for about 25 - 30 minutes, depending on how ferocious your oven is. Watch them closely. Sit in front of the oven with rapt attention as if you were watching an episode of Bold and The Beautiful. You do not want burnt brownies.

7. Gather teaspoons and flatmates around pot and scrape up every last drop of batter. Use fingers and/or tongues if you're bunch of savages (we were).

8. Get too impatient to wait and remove from oven after about 20 minutes. The top of the brownie should be slightly firm but when you poke it with your finger it should still be nice and gooey underneath.

9. Wait about 15 seconds for it to cool then eat. Also works well as a poor-mans mud cake for dessert with some strawberries and cream.

10. Next day, heat piece of brownie for 20 seconds in microwave and serve with glass of cold milk for delicious but nutritionally unsound breakfast.

Shauna Marsh is a webmistress and celebrity who lives in Canberra Australia. She has a dog named Harry and a car called Golden Boy. She keeps us up to date with rockin' website shauny.org.