A sweet tooth for a vegan chocolate orange brownies recipe…
I’v been vegan eating all Lent and we’ve had some tasty grub – from vegan green pesto spaghetti (absolutely scrum, featuring spinach, herbs and ground almonds leftover from almond milk!) with tomatoes and broccoli on top, to vegan jerusalem artichoke risotto with parsnip crisps on top for our anniversary. I’ve been having as much fun in the dessert department though, with blood orange and campari granita (barnivore, my vegans-best-friend says campari is vegan, so that’s a relief!) and this brilliant vegan chocolate orange brownies recipe. I pretty much took it wholesale from allrecipes.com, changing only miniscule things to suit me better, so thank you to them!!
If you are interested in recipes for the pesto pasta, artichoke risotto or blood orange & campari granita, let me know in comments and I’ll get them up. I have just been a bit busy lately!
Anyway – these brownies are killer! My mum is pretty pro at making brownies, and she says these vegan ones might even rival hers! They’re less nutty and more wholesomely chocolatey…like a really moist, squishy cake, rather than that fudgey consistency some brownies provide. The (quite large…) amount of demerara gives them a gorgeous bite of crunch on top, before the squidgy cake with occasional chunks of chocolate underneath. I like both, but one thing is for certain – you won’t feel in any way deprived by their vegan status.
Ingredients:
250g self-raising flour
350g dememerara sugar
75g cocoa powder
1 tsp seasalt
125ml flavourless oil (I used sunflower, but you could use vegetable or experiment with a nut oil)
125g apple puree
250ml cold water
zest of 1 large orange
squirt of orange juice (c. 1tbsp)
50g dark chocolate, chopped roughly
(optional) handful of walnuts, chopped
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease your tin (9x13in) and line with baking parchment.
In a large mixing bowl, mix flour, sugar, cocoa and salt to be well combined.
Pour the oil into a measuring jug, then add the apple puree until you reach the 250ml level. (To make apple puree, just dice an apple, discard the very firm parts of the core, and cook with a couple of tbsp of water per medium sized apple. Add more water if the puree seems too dry or in danger of burning. No need to add any sugar. Cook for 15mins or until the apple is well broken down into a puree).
Add another 250ml of cold water to your jug filled with apple and oil. Add the orange zest and juice too, and whisk to combine.
Add the jug full of liquids to the bowl full of dry ingredients and add chopped chocolate and the nuts, if using. Stir well until combined.
Empty your mix into your prepared cake tin.
Bake in the preheated oven for 30mins, or until a skewer inserted into the mix comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool on a baking rack, in its tin, for 10mins.
When a little more cool, remove from the tin and slice. Will keep for a week in a tin if you don’t eat them sooner!
x
