I absolutely adore brownies.  They’re one of the simplest things to make and one of the most often ordered desserts if we go out for dinner and they’re on the menu.  Ok, so it’s also because they mostly come with vanilla ice cream and hot fudgy sauce but if it’s on the menu there had better be something pretty darn good there to make me choose it instead.  You really can’t fault a good brownie and you have to work hard to get it wrong.  It’s that crusty coat that gives way to melt in the mouth soft chocolate fudgyness.  Excuse me while I wipe up the drool a little here.

But like all decadent desserts it’s full of all the things we’re trying to cut back on/down on/out of our diet.  It ‘aint easy though when the sweet cravings kick in.  AKA every evening.  As a child brought up with pudding after I’d diligently eaten my plate of food I now crave something sweet after something savoury.  Anyone else have that problem?

So after looking at many MANY recipes for gluten free, vegan brownies and finding that most contained ingredients I’d either never heard of or had no way of getting hold of, it was back to kitchen alchemy and sorta making it up as I went along.

‘Regular’ basic brownie has just a few ingredients – butter, chocolate, eggs, flour and sugar.  That’s it.  So would it be as simple as swapping out one thing for something else?

The first problem was the chocolate.  For which there’s really no substitute.  Raw cacao powder is great for some things but it’s quite bitter and provides no moisture like melted chocolate.  Ok, so we’ll stick with the chocolate. But let’s keep it high cocoa content dark chocolate. The brand you use is up to you.  If you’re not vegan there’s almost too much choice.  If you want to keep these brownies vegan we recommend any of these (trust me, we’ve tested them to death ?)

• Doisy & Dam – Maca, Vanilla and Cacao Nibs – some of the best damn chocolate I’ve ever tasted!
• Conscious Chocolate – The Dark Side – lovely company, raw and handmade
• Callebaut – Dark Chocolate Callets – a little more expensive but this was the stuff I used in a professional kitchen.  This is serious chocolate ?

Butter – well that’s simple, swap it for a combination of coconut oil and coconut yoghurt.  Eggs – easy peasy, flax eggs to the rescue!  Flour – hmmm, I’ve had some recent absolute disasters using gluten free flour.  For some reason I just can’t get it to work in baking.  Bread seems to be fine, but cakes and muffins?  Nuh-uh.  Would the texture be too unpleasant with ground oats?  Maannn, where would I be without oats?  They’re my go to for EVERYTHING!  Maybe half oats/half almonds?  Yup, that might work.

The sugar is simple, just a straight swap to coconut sugar (after I’ve had a sniff in the bag of course! If you don’t already know I have a real thing about the smell of coconut sugar — DIVINE!)

I also wanted to give it a little extra kick of something fruity.  We’ve recently discovered Arctic Power and their wonderful range of berry powders.  Boy, they give a real hit of flavour to everything!  They’re fantastic in your morning porridge or overnight oats or try adding a spoonful to your weekend pancakes.  I see lots of berry tinged things in our future eating!

I can’t tell you how proud I was when I took these out of the oven and they weren’t just a soggy mess.  Not only did they look like brownies but a burnt tongue later and I discovered they tasted like brownies!!  I genuinely burnt my mouth – don’t lick a hot knife kids ?

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