Vegan Brownies

I came across this recipe a few weeks ago but haven't had the opportunity to try it out. The weather had been pretty favourable lately and with my mum up for a visit, the kids and I have been gallivanting around with her. After all sunny days are such a 'rare occurance' in Britain it just didn't seem right to waste the sunshine and spent it indoors baking! However I had the opportunity today what with the heavens generously showering us with rain and D having some sort of a stomach bug which had him throwing up half the night, it certainly wasn't a good day to take our itchy feet out for exploring. So to cheer myself and D up, I decided to make some vegan brownies.

The recipe seemed easy enough and I had most of the ingredients. Read some of the comments under the reviews and decided to do some adjustments to the recipe. Yeah, yeah ... my itchy head can just never seem to leave recipes alone. :)

Anyway here are the results and I was pretty satisfied with it. It wasn't too sweet and it wasn't dry although I lessen the amount of oil in the original recipe. J loved it but unfortunately D didn't seem to have an appetite. Poor little guy he must be feeling really awful as it was so unlike him to refuse something chocolatey.

Just out of the oven

Cooling on the rack

Brownies anyone?

The Recipe

Ingredients

200g gluten free flour

50g wholegrain spelt flour

55g stevia blend

75g vegan dark chocolate (chopped)

55g organic cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

100ml maple syrup

100ml oat milk

50g raw almond butter

125ml vegetable oil

1 tsp almond extract

Method

1. Preheat oven at 160C
2. In large bowl add flour, stevia, chopped chocolate, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Stir until it looks evenly mixed.
3. Add in almond butter. Pour in maple syrup, oat milk, vegetable oil and almond extract. Mix well until the mixture looks evenly blended.
4. Spread in baking tin (9x13 in)
5. Bake for 15 mins until top is no longer shiny. Cool for 10 mins before cutting into squares.

The Pandan Project - Part 2

There is a saying 'Why change something when you know it works?' But then again why not? There was nothing wrong with Betty Saw's 'Never Fail Pandan Cake Recipe'. My only concern about it is that it is quite heavily laden with sugar!!! 300g is quite a lot in my opinion.Well if you limit yourself to just one piece a day it may not be that bad for you but try telling that to a 3 year old! There has to be a way round this. My ultimate aim after all was to try to give D a gluten-sugar-diary free diet as much as possible. Would the recipe work if I replace sugar with stevia blend and self raising flour with a gluten free version?

I did a search on the web and found that it was possible to make chiffon cake with gluten free flour if xanthum gum was added to the mixture. It was also possible to make it with stevia in combination with cane sugar (in this case a reduced amount of sugar was used). However I have not found a combination for a sugar free/gluten free version. Was it possible to create one?

Baking is pretty much a science like chemistry and to substitute ingredients we need to understand what part it plays in the baking process. From what I've read sugar does not only sweeten but also adds bulk and volume. Chiffon cakes depend on sugar for its lift and volume. Gluten in the flour serves to form the network which holds the cake together. If we took some of the sugar and gluten out of the equation and compensated the loss of sugar with extra liquid (coconut milk) would it still work?

The only way of knowing is to experiment and find out. Good lab practice usually entails replacing one thing at a time but ... :P

Experiment 1:
Replace self raising flour with gluten free self-raising flour. The gluten free self-raising flour (Dove's brand) has xanthum gum premixed in it.
Added 100g sugar instead of 300g to egg white
Added 50g stevia blend plus 2 tbls of maple syrup to egg yolks
Increase volume of coconut milk from 125ml to 300ml

The cake was rather fragile and broke apart when getting out of the tin

Cross-section of the cake it. Doesn't look too bad!

The result:
The cake did rise but was rather fragile and part of it fell apart when removing from the tin. Other than that it still looked and tasted like pandan cake even though it was slightly 'wetter' than usual (probably as a result of the extra coconut milk).

Experiment 2:
Same as the above except I added a tsp of xanthum gum and reduce the amt of coconut milk to 200ml!

Slightly better looking cake but still rather fragile

Cross section of the cake

The result:
The cake was still fragile but a bit more stable than previous. Taste wise I still preferred the one from the first experiment. Xanthum gum makes the mixture a bit too 'gummy' for my liking!

Conclusion:
It is possible to have a gluten free and low sugar version of the cake but you'll have to sacrifice the presentation so I think I'll save this version for my kids only. Guests at my house can have the Betty Saw version!