Okay, so I have to hold my hands up and say I did not expect this to go well! I've cooked vegan food but i've never baked anything vegan. So when I was doing my daily scan of Pinterest and stumbled upon a few different recipes and ideas, a lightbulb did flash above my head. WHY NOT EH?
The recipes I found were really straight forward - some only using four ingredients - however I've heard of these scary 'Making a Pinterest Recipe' stories from friends and I was a bit....well terrified. I sort of tailored the recipe to what I had in the cupboard because, well, bugger going to the shops when I was in full blown lounge wear and my hair resembling a milkmaid's with a bandana to stop my fringe pissing me off. For the record, this is not the cute look that you see on the 'milkmaid braids with bandana look' Pinterest search images; oh no! this is a sweaty, no make-up, faded and frizzy hair look - HOT!
So adorning my pinny, I ventured into the rarely-opened baking cupboard. The measuring was a bit of a faff (as I hate measuring) but it was reasonably easy to do as the recipe I was basing mine on was all cups.
You've seen the photo *points above* and I actually haven't said this but the brownies are AMAZING! For someone who isn't actually vegan, I surprised myself with how much I loved these. The dark chocolate gives it a richness and the uncooked batter actually tastes like there's egg in there - BUT THERE'S NOT! I haven't actually tried any other vegan brownies so I can't compare to where these should be on the 'Awesome Vegan Brownie' list, so I encourage all you vegans to try it. I also used spelt flour for this to make it a bit more on the healthy side and less gluten-y and adds a bit of protein.
The recipe I made up is:
2 heaped cups of Spelt Flour (around 2 and a quarter cups)
2 cups dark drown sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sea salt
1 cup dark choc chips (for melting)
Half a cup dark (or dairy free milk) choc chips
1 large ripe banana
Half a cup olive oil
1 cup water (give or take half a cup depending on consistency)
4 tsp cider vinegar
Preheat the oven to 170C and grease and flour (or greaseproof paper) a rectangular cake pan that's about 11x7 inches.
Melt the cup of dark chocolate chips over a Bain-Marie until all the chocolate has melted. Keep this on a low heat until melted to stop the chocolate setting.
Sift the flour and add in the rest of the dry ingredients. In another bowl, mash the banana until it's a smooth consistency without any lumps then add in the oil, water and vinegar. Whisk these together and add to the dry ingredients. Before mixing, add the melted chocolate and stir until the mixture is fully combined and smooth. Add your chocolate chips. Bung in the oven for 15-25 minutes until the top looks cooked.
Hopefully this has made sense! As you can see it's all pretty easy and straightforward and measuring with cups made it a bit less stressful than all this measuring on scales malarkey!
ENJOY x
