Saturday, November 26, 2011

If you head on over to The Guilty Kitchen, you can find lots of fabulous recipes like THIS ONE for the ultimate vegan chocolate brownies!!


Ultimate Vegan Brownies
1 cup coconut oil
4 oz. (or 112 grams) bittersweet chocolate or to be even more strict just use unsweetened chocolate with 70% (or more) cocoa solids.
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp instant coffee or espresso powder
1/2 cup hot water
2 cups sugar**

*1 cup cake or pastry flour
*1 cup whole wheat flour
* (Since our house is Gluten free, I would substitute 1 cup Jules Gluten Free Flour + 1 cup Tapioca Flour to make it a Gluten FREE recipe)

3/4 cup dutch process cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp flax seeds (ground)
6 Tbsp hot water
1. Preheat oven to 350°F and grease an 8 x 8 pan.
2. In a double boiler or a bowl set atop a pot of gently simmering water, melt the coconut oil, chocolate squares and vanilla together.
3. Mix the coffee (or espresso) powder with the 1/2 cup of hot water and stir into the coconut/chocolate mixture. Add sugar and remove from heat. The sugars will dissolve a bit but you don’t need to completely dissolve it.
4. In another bowl, sift together the flours, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk to combine.
5. In yet another bowl (small one), mix the flax seeds and 6 Tbsp of hot water, allow to sit for 2-3 minutes.
6. Combine the chocolate/coconut oil mixture with the flour mixture and stir to incorporate. Add the thickened flax and stir that in as well.
7. Pour the batter into the greased baking pan and bake for 30-40 minutes. Start checking the brownies after the first 30 minutes to ensure it is baking evenly.
8. When finished, remove the brownies from the oven, set atop a cooling rack and get busy somewhere else. These babies need to be utterly cooled before consuming. If you attempt to eat them before they are properly cooled, they willcrumble. When they are properly cooled, you can’t even tell they are eggless, I promise!
** Most popular brands of white and brown sugar are NOT vegan. An animal product called “bone char” is used in the bleaching or whitening process and therefore renders the sugar useless in vegan baking. Although I’m sure some vegans are not aware of this, it is better to use something else just in case. In this recipe I used 1/2 cup of sucanat, 1/2 cup organic cane sugar in the raw and 1 cup of organic demerera (just because I had all three!). Any sugar will do (I prefer 1 cup white and 1 cup brown for flavour) but if you need a truly vegan product, look for the sugars I mentioned.

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