In an attempt to create all that I seek in a good brownie, I’ve tried no fewer than 25 variations of this recipe before . My aim? To strike the perfect balance between fudgy and cakey, chocolate-rich but not overwhelmingly so, and of course, to produce the highly-coveted glossy, crackly top.

The entire process has been as intense as the cocoa solids in the chocolate I was baking with.

A great vegan brownie recipe

My final bar is everything I look for in a truly wicked brownie. Squares of dense chocolate fudge, 2.5cm deep, encased in light chocolate cake, and crowned with a glossy, paper-thin “meringue-ish” patina. They’re moist, but not so much that they don’t benefit from being washed down with a glass of cold milk. And most importantly, they’re not so intensely flavoured that they feel too grown up to be a nostalgic treat.

Brownies will only be as good as the chocolate you use

Brownies made with dark chocolate will produce a brownie with more more bitter notes than brownies made with milk chocolate. I follow the school of thought that advocates the use of the best quality chocolate you can afford. After all, brownies are all about showing off great chocolate.

I’m yet to find a vegan milk chocolate I love, so I stuck to my two favourite dark chocolate brands in this recipe. If you do makes these brownies with milk chocolate, note that the recipe will result in brownies that are lighter in colour and much sweeter than the original.

My best advice is to choose the chocolate brands you actually like the taste of. It sounds silly but this is an easy thing to overlook. Having said this, feel free to mix things up with a couple of different brands. Baker extraordinaire, Stella Parks suggests blending multiple chocolate brands in her fabulous cookbook, Bravetart. Using multiple varieties allows you to build depth of flavour in your brownies. It works.

These vegan brownies are the ultimate balance between fudgy and chewy, chocolatey and sweet.

Finding your flavour inspiration

Whilst the most important flavour of any brownie comes from the chocolate, there is a simple beauty in being able to customise them to your taste.

Some great brownie mix-in ideas

• Chopped nuts
• More chocolate (your favourite candy bar, for example)
• Crushed cookies or cookie dough
• Fruits like cherries or raspberries
• Spices. If you know me, I’m all about masala magic

My midnight brownies are flavoured with star anise and orange zest. It’s a truly breathtaking combination that was meant to be paired with chocolate.

The eight-pointed star releases a delicious liquorice aroma when ground into a fine powder. Muddling it with the zest of an orange mellows it down for Asian vibes your brownies will welcome.

Baking for relaxation

Do you ever get an itch to wander into the kitchen and bake? I do. It’s an inexplicable longing to make magic for the people you love (including yourself because self-love is important too).

It’s not often I go in to the kitchen completely sure of what I’m going to make. I’ll have something in the fridge or cupboard I know I want, then I forage about until I find the perfect partners for what I fancy and they could be totally bizarre combinations I’ve never tried before.

If I’ve learned anything from all my years of experimental cooking is that you have to be fearless. FEARLESS. Yeah sure, sometimes things don’t turn out the way you plan but that’s what takeaway pizza and shop-bought ice cream is there for.

Ingredients you’ll need to make my Vegan Crackled Midnight Brownies

• Plain flour (all-purpose flour)
• Icing sugar
• Cornflour
• Cocoa powder (not hot chocolate mix)
• Baking powder
• Ground flax seeds
• Aquafaba (water from a can of unsalted chickpeas or beans)
• Water
• Refined coconut oil
• Dark chocolate (1-2 of your favourite brands)
• Light brown sugar
• Vanilla extract
• Ground star anise
• Orange zest
• Fine salt

Print

Vegan Crackled Midnight Brownies

Named so because of all the nights I stayed up until midnight trying to perfect the recipe! These vegan brownies are the ultimate balance between fudgy and chewy, chocolatey and sweet.

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Keyword baking

Prep Time 25 minutes minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes minutes

Total Time 45 minutes minutes

Servings 16

Author Sanjana

Equipment

• 20cm x 25cm x 10cm-deep (8" x 10" x 4"-deep) non-stick baking tin or 9" x 4"-deep square

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp ground flax seeds
• 120 ml aquafaba hot
• 100 g plain flour
• 50 g cocoa powder
• 1 tbsp cornflour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 125 g dark chocolate chopped (I used a blend of two of my favourite brands)
• 60 g coconut oil
• 200 g icing sugar
• 50 g light brown sugar
• 60 ml hot water
• 1/4 tsp ground star anise
• Zest of 1 medium orange

Instructions

• Grease and line a 20cm x 25cm x 10cm-deep (8" x 10" x 4"-deep) traybake tin with coconut oil and baking parchment. Leave an overhang at either side to lift the brownie out easily later.
• Pre-heat the oven to 175°C/350°F.
• In a small bowl, mix together the ground flax seeds and hot aquafaba. Allow to stand for 5 minutes.
• Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, cornflour, baking powder and salt.
• Place the chocolate and coconut oil over a bain-marie and allow it to melt, stirring gently. Once melted, remove from the heat and set aside. You can also microwave them in a glass bowl on high power in 30 second intervals until melted. Stir gently between each blast. Allow to cool to room temperature.
• Add the icing sugar, brown sugar, flax-aquafaba mixture, hot water, orange zest and ground star anise. Whip for 2-3 minutes until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is smooth and shiny.
• Add the sifted dry ingredients and whisk again until smooth and glossy, about 90 seconds.
• Pour into a lined pan and bake for 25 minutes. Allow to cool completely in the tin before slicing for perfect squares.

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If you like this recipe, you’ll love these Vegan Rice Krispie Treats made with REAL vanilla!

Love Sanjana

The post Vegan Crackled Midnight Brownies appeared first on Sanjana.Feasts.

It’s not often I go in to the kitchen completely sure of what I’m going to produce. I’ll have something in the fridge or cupboard I know I want, then I forage about until I find the perfect partners for what I fancy and they could be totally bizarre combinations I’ve never tried before.

If I’ve learned anything from all my years of experimental cooking is that you have to be fearless. FEARLESS. Yeah sure, sometimes things don’t turn out the way you plan but that’s what takeaway pizza is there for. I’ve rescued even the most disastrous of dinners and 98% of the time, the antidote consists of lemon, salt and sugar. They are like magic for repairing even the spiciest of curries.

Baking is different. As sweet as it can be, baking can also be very cruel – especially eggless and vegan baking. I’ve had more disasters than successes and too many slabs of sunken cakes and burst macarons to count on two hands, presuming I had the arms of the goddess Laxmi. Having said this, I’ve made countless batches of eggless and vegan brownies over the years… It’s finally safe to say I think I’ve nailed it.

So when I wandered in to the kitchen on this particular day, I was fully prepared for what was going to happen and even though I was about to step in to that baking danger zone, I was f e a r l e s s.

What was about to happen was something truly beautiful, btw. It was the coming together of super-moist dark chocolate heaven, creamy-salty peanut butter and the deeply-aromatic flavours of cardamom which I cannot imagine life without.

Blended black beans give these brownies an incredible texture and allow them to retain even more moisture, which produce perfect brownies without the need for eggs, or any dairy products. This makes these brownies 100% vegan and egg free. What could be better?

Vegan Peanut Butter and Cardamom Brownies
Makes 18-20 brownies

Ingredients

For the Brownie Batter:

250g plain flour
60g good-quality cocoa powder (not drinking chocolate)
40g black beans, drained, rinsed and blended until smooth
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
150g light brown sugar
100ml groundnut or sunflower oil
320ml soy milk (or regular full-fat milk for a non-vegan brownie)
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

For the Peanut Butter and Cardamom Swirl:

100g crunchy peanut butter (you can use smooth if you prefer)
50g non-dairy spread such as Pure (if you’re not vegan, use unsalted butter – I’ve tried both ways)
50g light brown sugar
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp cornflour (cornstarch)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 160C/320F.

2. Line a 34 x 20 x 3cm H. (13 1⁄2″ x 8″ x 1″) brownie tin with greaseproof paper and oil. I add an extra long sheet of greaseproof paper lengthways to make handles for easy lifting out later. It really makes it much easier to remove from the pan.

3. To make the peanut butter and cardamom swirl, mix together all the ingredients until smooth. Place in the fridge until later.

4. To make the brownie batter, sift together all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

5. Whisk together all the wet ingredients including the bean paste and allow to sit for 10 minutes. Whisk again.

6. Gradually add the dry brownie batter ingredients in to the wet and whisk briefly until well combined. It’s really important not to over beat the batter.

7. Pour the batter in to your prepared brownie tin and smooth out the top. Next text your peanut butter swirl mixture from the fridge, give it a quick beat and dollop teaspoon-sized nuggets on top of the brownie batter. Use a butter knife or spoon to swirl it through.

8. Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes. It will still be a bit wobbly but this is good. Allow to cool in the pan for 15 minutes before running a knife around the edge of the tray to loosen up any brownie stuck to the edges. Using the clever little handles you made with greaseproof paper earlier, carefully lift the brownie out and place on a wire rack to cool completely.

9. Slice in to squares or rectangles. Enjoy with a cold glass of almond or hazelnut milk.

Love Sanjana

The post Vegan Peanut Butter and Cardamom Brownies appeared first on Sanjana.Feasts.

This. Is. It. You can stop the search. It has arrived: the ultimate eggless brownie. Oh, and did I mention that they can be made vegan too?

Oh happy day.

In other news, I would like to inform you that I will be absent for a short period of time due to education commitments. Bad times. Of course I would rather blog about my one true love in life (yes, I’m talking food) day in and day out but to get to where I want to be in the future, I must engage with the whole academic shebang. So I’m told.

So please don’t be offended if I’m not here to ‘ouhh’ and ‘ahh’ at your glorious recipes, for I will be drowning in the misery of English literature and would obviously prefer to be ‘ouhh-ing’ ‘and ahh-ing’.

I’m working on an essay at the moment regarding this extract from Edwidge Danticat; it is the Epilogue to ‘Women Like Us’, Krik? Krak! I would just like to share some pertinent lines with you:

Are there women who both cook and write? Kitchen poets, they call them. They slip phrases into their stew and wrap meaning around their pork before frying it. They make narrative dumplings and stuff their daughter’s mouths so they say nothing more. […] No, women like you don’t write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness, the rebelliousness.

Are there women who both cook and write? Is it a myth that women who cook are chained to their stovetops, their husbands and a life of misery? Why has cooking been perceived as a ‘female role’ for so long and why has it taken so much time for this notion to become less of a worldly opinion? Or do these ideas still exist? Do we really live in a world free of stereotypes, or do we just think we do? And if there are women who both cook and write, then I assume I must be a Kitchen Poet. Although in writing I, and many other food writers aim to unshackle the mind and shine new light on ideas, not push them into the darkness. Open your eyes, your minds, your mouths and unleash the ‘rebelliousness’ because that’s real cooking. Then write about it. This is my liberation.

Now I must love you and leave you… With these purely decadent, dense and delectable brownies.

Parting is such sweet sorrow.

Ingredients

1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
3/4 cup icing sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 tbsp melted butter (for a vegan recipe use oil)
1 cup buttermilk (or 2 tsp yogurt dissolved in 1 cup water with 1 tbsp lemon juice mixed in) or for a vegan recipe use 1 cup soy milk with 1 tbsp lemon juice mixed in
2 tsp instant coffee, dissolved in 1 tablespoon water
1 tbsp chopped nuts of your choice (I used pecans). Hazelnuts would be perfect too
2 tbsp chocolate chips dusted in a little plain flour (optional)

Method

1. Mix all of the dry ingredients together and then add all of the wet ingredients. Mix thoroughly and transfer into a greased, lined tin.

2. Bake at gas mark 4 for 20-25 minutes. Poke with a skewer- it should come out semi-clean for a fudgy brownie or bake for a little longer for a cake.

3. Allow to cool for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack.

4. Allow to cool thoroughly for maximum chocolaty taste.

The post The Ultimate Eggless Brownies appeared first on Sanjana.Feasts.