These fudgy vegan chocolate brownies are made using a heavily modified recipe that originally came from Carnation. It uses their new vegan condensed milk. The original recipe wasn’t so bad, but I’ve substantially improved it from a health and taste perspective.
I find most cakes and desserts just contain too much sugar and are also generally made with all white flour. In general, the first thing I do is reduce the sugar to more sensible levels. then substitute some or all of the white flour with wholemeal flour. These fudgy vegan chocolate brownies use 100% wholemeal flour, which offsets the sugar to some extent.
In this recipe I’ve added in some flax & chia seeds to boost omega 3 levels. I’ve also added whipped aqua faba which improves texture, rise and protein content. If you cook your own chickpeas, you won’t have any shortage of aqua faba. To whip aqua faba effectively however, you definitely need an elextric whisk. Start at a slow speed or it will go everywhere. As it starts to thicken speed up. It should in increase in volume to around 7 to 8 times.
Generally recipes are also a bit mean on the flavourings so I bumped those up a bit too. I also added in some chocolate chips and cocoa nibs – extra flavour and texture.
Anyway this is a major success on all those fronts, it’s super chocolaty, but low in sugar and overall it’s pretty healthy. Enjoy!
Chocolate Brownies
Ingredients
- 225 g of Dark chocolate (75g chopped into small chunks and set aside) – Tesco’s brand is great – or LIDL too!
- 200 g wholemeal self-raising flour
- 2 flat teasps baking powder
- ½ teasp teasp lo-salt or ordinary salt is fine
- 80 g of Caster sugar I reduced it from 120g – this was easily sweet enough
- 5 tbsps. 50g of cold pressed rapeseed oil
- 370 g one small tin of Carnation Vegan Condensed Milk Alternative
- 200 g of soya yogurt I used Alpro with coconut - reduce to 150g if using aqua faba
- 10 g to 15g of cocoa nibs – optional ingredient but it adds a nice extra crunch.
- 50 g ground almonds or almond flour
- 50 g aquafaba - optional - see note if using this, reduce soya yogurt to 150g
- 1 teasp instant coffee heaped
Instructions
- Melt 150g of the chocolate in short bursts in the microwave in a large jug
- thaw the aqua faba if using.
- whisk until stiff and around 400ml in volume
- Add the rest of the wet ingredients to the same bowl or jug, mix well and heat a bit more in the microwave to keep the chocolate liquid. Don't overdo it though - short bursts on medium power.
- Mix (with an electric whisk preferably) so it is completely homogenous.
- Add all wet ingredients to the dry ingredients along with the aqua faba and mix/whisk well with an electric whisk.
- Fold in (or use the electric whisk on medium) 50g of chocolate cut into small pieces (and cocoa nibs if using). Keep back 25g to scatter on top.
- Pour mixture into a grease proof paper lined smaller rectangular and deep Pyrex or metal dish/tray (26cm by 16cm)
- scatter the other 25g of chocolate pieces or mini buttons on top.
- Cook at 160°C for 45 to 50 minutes
- Check it’s done with a skewer – it should come out with no batter – but just a moist crumb. It will carry on cooking a little after you take it out of the oven anyway so not absolutely critical.
- Lift out of the tray with the edges of the greaseproof paper and cool on a wire rack.
- Cut when cooled with a sharp knife.
Notes
- Allow to cool a few minutes in the tin.
- Lift out with the edges of the grease-proof paper
- Allow to cool another 10 minutes on a wire rack - still on the paper
- Cover leaving some gaps to fully cool off - covering is to avoid it drying out too much.
- When fully cool, cut with a very sharp knife.
- It may help to wet the knife slightly to prevent it sticking too much.
- Alternatively score lightly on surface whilst still warm and then finish cutting when fully cooled.
