Dairy Free/Gluten Free Brownies

I never intended for my blog to be a recipe sharing platform. However, having become dairy free, I’ve been experimenting with recipes and I’m eager to share my latest attempt. Sister missionaries came over for lunch today and one of them is gluten and dairy free (she’s the one who first mentioned the dairy=headaches thing and saved my life), so I wanted to make a nice treat for them.

I’ve probably read nearly a hundred dairy free recipes over the last three weeks, it certainly feels like that anyway. I have to be honest, most of them have, what I would call, ‘weird stuff’ in them. A lot of the recipes call for things like coconut oil, cashew butter, rice flour and lots of other new to me ingredients.

I’m sure I will start using these ingredients soon but for now I’m just getting accustomed to not having cheese, cows milk or butter. Plus, we’re on such a tight budget at the moment and some of these special ingredients are quite expensive. So, I’ve stuck with close alternatives for

now.

Anyhoo, I managed to find a vegetable fat spread used for baking and a decent gluten free flour to make some rather delectable (i.e. where did they all go?) chocolate brownies.

And boy did it work. They turned out absolutely delicious; super chocolatey, gooey and slightly chewy too. They are more gooey than my usual brownie but I personally don’t see that as a bad thing. I guess if you prefer a more cake like brownie you could add a little more of the flour.

This is the part where I share a photo of perfectly plated brownies dusted with icing sugar. However in our house, treats just don’t last long enough for that. So here’s what was left (not the best photo either)...

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

7 oz vegetable fat spread (check there’s no milk or buttermilk in it) 6 1/2 heaped tbsp cocoa 4 eggs 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract/essence 1/4 tsp salt 2 1/2 oz gluten free flour blend

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°c and grease and line a brownie tin (or meat tin in my case) with baking parchment.

2. Melt vegetable fat spread and cocoa in a glass dish in the microwave (takes about a minute)

3. In a separate bowl, whisk eggs with vanilla and salt. Then gradually whisk in the sugar until you have a batter.

4. Add chocolate mix and then mix in flour gradually.

5. Put mix in baking tin and bake in the oven for between 20 and 30 minutes. My oven takes 30 minutes but it’s pretty rubbish.

Then eat them as soon as you like, they are delicious warm. They are slightly chewy when they are cool though, which is also so good! I would say they should last a few days in a sealed container but I wouldn’t really know.

And true to A Slice of Reality style, here’s a photo of what my kitchen looks like whenever I cook and/or bake...

Enjoy the Brownies and another slice (see what I did there) of my reality.