Happy Valentine's Day: Brownie Recipe
I meant to post this recipe some time ago, shortly after I first mentioned it, but, see, a thing happened that's on the dog ate my homework scale of absolutely ridiculous.
Of all the ways that exist to keep recipes organized, the only one that seems to work for me is index cards and what has become a terribly overstuffed tin can of a filing box. But even those index cards can fail me, and certainly not on the scale that you'd expect.
Simply put, the index card with my Gluten Free Sugar Free Brownie recipe disappeared.
It's not in the box. It's not on the counter. It's not anywhere in the fucking house.
So, really, I had to use muscle memory to remember how to make the brownies. I created a new index card. And here it is, reproduced for Internet posterity, so that I never lose it again.
A note before you click through: the recipe was created after trying different online recipes, none of which were particularly appetizing, so I bastardized what I liked about some recipes and created a hybrid. The recipe can be classified as 100% gluten free, refined sugar free, dairy-free, soy-free, vegetarian, and paleo-friendly. I've made a few comments about adapting the recipe to compensate for further dietary restrictions toward the end.
Also, a friend of mine made these brownies with her daughter. At no stage of this did either of them think that they were making brownies. In fact, my friend's daughter said, "I don't think this is going to taste good." I received a photograph, much later, of my friend's daughter hoarding the nearly-empty pan of brownies and holding up an apology sign for doubting me. So please, don't worry about how gross the ingredients sound or how unappetizing it looks when you're making it. The brownies really, really are very good.
Equipment:
Don't hate me, but you're going to need a scale.
Also, this will go a whole lot easier if you have a food processor.
Rubber spatula or spoon
8x8 cake pan, greased, but if silicone, that's even better and doesn't need greasing.
Ingredients:
200g of sugar free baking chocolate (not semi-sweet or bittersweet)
200g of dried dates
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup melted coconut oil
1 tsp vanilla
3 large eggs
Optional toppers (nuts or cocoa nibs or whatever floats your boat)
Substitutions:
If you're OK with sugar and like your brownies on the sweet side, use semi-sweet or bittersweet baking chocolate. If you're OK with soy, too, use semi-sweet chocolate chips, which tend to use soy lecithin as a releasing agent. If all you can find is cocoa powder, you can use that, too, but you'll have to mix it with a fat (coconut oil, or maybe avocado if that's your thing) to get a sticky, pasty consistency.
If you can't find coconut oil and are OK with other types of oils, then substitute on a 1:1 ratio.
If you're allergic to eggs, um. This is a tough one. Maybe try a flaxseed-water or chiaseed-water thickened mixture equivalent, but I didn't test this and can't guarantee results.
Likewise, if you can't use dates, which provide the sweetness in the recipe, you'll need to substitute for something equally sticky under the same conditions. I can't guarantee this, but I'll suggest pre-preparing a jam or a coulis using 400g of blueberries or strawberries with water in a pot and cooking it down until it's nice and thick. You may need more or less of this in order to achieve a slightly-runny cake-like batter.
You can omit the vanilla entirely. It doesn't really make much of a difference in the outcome.
Preparation:
Dried dates are, well, dry. You can use them as they are, but your food processor will definitely not thank you -- it'll sound like it's dying while taking a stroll across your counter. Pro Tip is to soak those dates in boiling water for at least 15 minutes to soften them, then drain them of water. The bonus to doing this is that the chocolate will get softer faster from the warmed dates and you'll have a less lumpy batter.
Okay! In a food processor, combine the chocolate, the dates, and the baking soda. Process on high for a couple of minutes until smooth-ish. It can be lumpy, don't worry about that.
If you don't have a food processor, I'm afraid I don't have an easy solution for you. Your option is to chop everything by hand until they're super fine (maybe grate the chocolate to help you out). First the dates (when dry), then the chocolates, then combine the two with baking soda and stir until the heat from the dates melts the chocolate a bit. On the plus side, you'll be working off all the calories from eating the brownies by preparing it. Also, it'll get messy.
Once that's done, add the melted coconut oil (it melts fast in the microwave), the vanilla, and the eggs, and process at high speed again. Just a couple of minutes, maybe less.
As a Pro Tip, most food processors have a level restriction for liquids. If yours is fairly low, that's okay. Just push the chocolate/dates off to the far wall to make room and make sure the liquids stay below the line. Then process; it'll mix up fast and you won't have a mess.
Scrape all of this into a cake pan.
You have the option to add toppers. Some people like nuts, but I'm hit-or-miss with nuts right now. Traditional toppers are walnuts, pecans, or peanuts. You don't need to add anything, but I like a bit of a crunch, so I add a sprinkle of cocoa nibs, which are sugar free.
Bake at 350F for 23-26 minutes.
Tweaks:
You can add more chocolate. I've been using 250g of chocolate pretty consistently and it turns out to be fudgier.
You can add more dates, but I don't really recommend it, especially if you soak the dates beforehand, because you'd need to drain them really, really well to make sure the batter doesn't get too much moisture. More dates means the outcome is sweeter, but the more moisture means that the brownies will be wetter and will stick to the pan.
You can add more baking soda. I don't measure and I tend to add more than 1tsp. All this will do is result in a brownie that has a little bit more rise.
I also tend to add 1/3 cup coconut oil instead of 1/4 cup. It seems to offset the flat blah that is sugar-free chocolate and keeps the brownie from crumbling into bits.
The cooking time depends on how you like your brownies. If you cook it for 26 minutes, it'll be cake-y. If you cook it for 23 minutes, it'll be fudge-y. Of course, a lot of this depends on your oven, as no oven is exactly alike, so you may have to play around with the baking time until you find your sweet spot. Mine happens to be 24 minutes.
Good luck, happy eating, and Happy Valentine's day!
Of all the ways that exist to keep recipes organized, the only one that seems to work for me is index cards and what has become a terribly overstuffed tin can of a filing box. But even those index cards can fail me, and certainly not on the scale that you'd expect.
Simply put, the index card with my Gluten Free Sugar Free Brownie recipe disappeared.
It's not in the box. It's not on the counter. It's not anywhere in the fucking house.
So, really, I had to use muscle memory to remember how to make the brownies. I created a new index card. And here it is, reproduced for Internet posterity, so that I never lose it again.
A note before you click through: the recipe was created after trying different online recipes, none of which were particularly appetizing, so I bastardized what I liked about some recipes and created a hybrid. The recipe can be classified as 100% gluten free, refined sugar free, dairy-free, soy-free, vegetarian, and paleo-friendly. I've made a few comments about adapting the recipe to compensate for further dietary restrictions toward the end.
Also, a friend of mine made these brownies with her daughter. At no stage of this did either of them think that they were making brownies. In fact, my friend's daughter said, "I don't think this is going to taste good." I received a photograph, much later, of my friend's daughter hoarding the nearly-empty pan of brownies and holding up an apology sign for doubting me. So please, don't worry about how gross the ingredients sound or how unappetizing it looks when you're making it. The brownies really, really are very good.
Equipment:
Don't hate me, but you're going to need a scale.
Also, this will go a whole lot easier if you have a food processor.
Rubber spatula or spoon
8x8 cake pan, greased, but if silicone, that's even better and doesn't need greasing.
Ingredients:
200g of sugar free baking chocolate (not semi-sweet or bittersweet)
200g of dried dates
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup melted coconut oil
1 tsp vanilla
3 large eggs
Optional toppers (nuts or cocoa nibs or whatever floats your boat)
Substitutions:
If you're OK with sugar and like your brownies on the sweet side, use semi-sweet or bittersweet baking chocolate. If you're OK with soy, too, use semi-sweet chocolate chips, which tend to use soy lecithin as a releasing agent. If all you can find is cocoa powder, you can use that, too, but you'll have to mix it with a fat (coconut oil, or maybe avocado if that's your thing) to get a sticky, pasty consistency.
If you can't find coconut oil and are OK with other types of oils, then substitute on a 1:1 ratio.
If you're allergic to eggs, um. This is a tough one. Maybe try a flaxseed-water or chiaseed-water thickened mixture equivalent, but I didn't test this and can't guarantee results.
Likewise, if you can't use dates, which provide the sweetness in the recipe, you'll need to substitute for something equally sticky under the same conditions. I can't guarantee this, but I'll suggest pre-preparing a jam or a coulis using 400g of blueberries or strawberries with water in a pot and cooking it down until it's nice and thick. You may need more or less of this in order to achieve a slightly-runny cake-like batter.
You can omit the vanilla entirely. It doesn't really make much of a difference in the outcome.
Preparation:
Dried dates are, well, dry. You can use them as they are, but your food processor will definitely not thank you -- it'll sound like it's dying while taking a stroll across your counter. Pro Tip is to soak those dates in boiling water for at least 15 minutes to soften them, then drain them of water. The bonus to doing this is that the chocolate will get softer faster from the warmed dates and you'll have a less lumpy batter.
Okay! In a food processor, combine the chocolate, the dates, and the baking soda. Process on high for a couple of minutes until smooth-ish. It can be lumpy, don't worry about that.
If you don't have a food processor, I'm afraid I don't have an easy solution for you. Your option is to chop everything by hand until they're super fine (maybe grate the chocolate to help you out). First the dates (when dry), then the chocolates, then combine the two with baking soda and stir until the heat from the dates melts the chocolate a bit. On the plus side, you'll be working off all the calories from eating the brownies by preparing it. Also, it'll get messy.
Once that's done, add the melted coconut oil (it melts fast in the microwave), the vanilla, and the eggs, and process at high speed again. Just a couple of minutes, maybe less.
As a Pro Tip, most food processors have a level restriction for liquids. If yours is fairly low, that's okay. Just push the chocolate/dates off to the far wall to make room and make sure the liquids stay below the line. Then process; it'll mix up fast and you won't have a mess.
Scrape all of this into a cake pan.
You have the option to add toppers. Some people like nuts, but I'm hit-or-miss with nuts right now. Traditional toppers are walnuts, pecans, or peanuts. You don't need to add anything, but I like a bit of a crunch, so I add a sprinkle of cocoa nibs, which are sugar free.
Bake at 350F for 23-26 minutes.
Tweaks:
You can add more chocolate. I've been using 250g of chocolate pretty consistently and it turns out to be fudgier.
You can add more dates, but I don't really recommend it, especially if you soak the dates beforehand, because you'd need to drain them really, really well to make sure the batter doesn't get too much moisture. More dates means the outcome is sweeter, but the more moisture means that the brownies will be wetter and will stick to the pan.
You can add more baking soda. I don't measure and I tend to add more than 1tsp. All this will do is result in a brownie that has a little bit more rise.
I also tend to add 1/3 cup coconut oil instead of 1/4 cup. It seems to offset the flat blah that is sugar-free chocolate and keeps the brownie from crumbling into bits.
The cooking time depends on how you like your brownies. If you cook it for 26 minutes, it'll be cake-y. If you cook it for 23 minutes, it'll be fudge-y. Of course, a lot of this depends on your oven, as no oven is exactly alike, so you may have to play around with the baking time until you find your sweet spot. Mine happens to be 24 minutes.
Good luck, happy eating, and Happy Valentine's day!