Friday, October 21, 2011

baking vegan brownies

I love baking, but when I get busy, I always revert to my standby recipe for chocolate chip cookies. I have it memorized and I always keep the ingredients on hand, so it's easy to whip up in a hurry...it actually only takes me about 10 minutes from the time I start to the minute they go in the oven!

But this week I wanted to make something sweet and was tired of cookies. I was going to make this brownie recipe which is my go-to vegan brownie recipe. I don't have it memorized like the cookies but I've made it a number of times. If you make this recipe, you won't be disappointed. It's very good.

However, as much as I like making something delicious quickly with a recipe I trust, I also like stepping out on a limb and trying new ones. So I looked up "vegan brownies" on Pinterest (which I love for finding recipes!) and found this recipe: Gooey Vegan Brownies.

I can appreciate a recipe with the word "gooey" in the title. When I was in elementary school, every year we had a back-to-school picnic at a local park, and one game that was always there was the cake walk. I played it every year and only won once! But I still remember the dessert I won: ooey gooey butter bars. Sounds like a heart attack, doesn't it? The bars came with a recipe card, which my mom let me recreate once before declaring there was simply too much butter in them to make again! Googling that exact recipe title now confirms that what my mom told me was true.

But gooey vegan brownies have no butter in them. They are not the most wholesome thing you will ever eat--as most brownies are not--but I believe in having a few sweet treats here and there. They turned out amazing and as you can see I didn't even get a proper picture of them but instead had to photograph the last one left in the pan! Oops. I have a tip if you want your brownies to be soft and fudgey: don't wait until the middle is done. The recipe says a toothpick will come out clean in the middle but for me they never do. I just take them out of the oven at the time the recipe says they will be done, and let them set up for at least an hour. There are no eggs since these are vegan, so you don't have to worry about that. I added 1 Tbsp ground flax to the recipe to ensure that they wouldn't fall apart, but I don't know if that was necessary. However, they held up well.

These are the best vegan brownies I've made. I would dare say you would not even realize they were vegan if I didn't tell you!

2 comments:

uccella said...

These look sinfully delicious...and not nearly as sickly sweet as the butter bars. Glad to hear it was a success!

PS. I only ever seen unsweetened cocoa powder in Spain at an American store, but it costs an arm and a leg. (I don't remember how much, exactly, but a bottle of Hershey's syrup was 6.50 Euros!!) Last year my roommate discovered that using sugar-free cocoa made for drinking chocolate was a perfect substitute, so that's what I have in my cupboard :)

Kristen said...

Oh, man! What do the Spanish use when they want to bake something chocolate-y? I'm glad your roommate came up with an alternative!

And yes, these were sooo delicious! If you like a traditional fudgey brownie, this is a great recipe to try.