I was baking brownies to share this weekend and, because we all have different dietary requirements, they needed to be everything free. Well, not everything free, but dairy, gluten, and soya free, and ideally palm oil free as well.
The gluten free need was easily met; if I don’t have time to risk an experiment not being good enough to share or if I just want a quick and easy substitute flour for a recipe that would usually use wheat I fall back on a gluten free flour blend I know I can rely on. Avoiding dairy, soya, and palm with fat that would behave a lot like butter was a more interesting challenge. I decided to try coconut oil. You don’t have to buy expensive virgin coconut oil for these though, there’s no way you’d be making my brownies as part of a health food kick, I used the cheapest I could find and it worked just fine.
I may experiment more with different flours and maybe adding walnuts or chocolate chips but given that these were squidgy yet slightly crumbly, with a thin, crisp top I’m happy with how they turned out, and given how rapidly the pile on the plate went down I think others were happy too.
The recipe
Makes 12-16 brownies
- 5 oz Dark Chocolate (a bar and a half of the 71% one I like, leaving me some to eat while brownies bake)
- 3.5 fl oz coconut oil
- 7 oz granulated sugar
- 4 oz gluten free plain white flour blend
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 3 medium eggs
Pre-heat oven to 170ºC fan oven (I think that’s about 190ºC without fan or Gas Mark 5).
Grease and line an 8″ square baking dish or tin.
Melt the chocolate and coconut oil together in a double boiler.
Mix the sugar, flour, and baking powder together in a large bowl.
Beat the eggs and whisk thoroughly into the dry ingredients.
Stir in the chocolate and coconut oil.
(Add any extras you fancy like chopped walnuts or dried cherries at this stage).
Transfer the mix to your baking dish and bake for 20-25 minutes (it should be crisp on top but still slightly soft.
Allow to cool in the baking dish for about 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.
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