Fudgy Chocolate Brownies

It’s true, I already have a brownie recipe on my blog, posted nearly two years ago! And those brownies are really great and super simple to make. But they’re cakey brownies – which I think are great, but there’s always room for more than one type of brownie! These brownies are fudgy, gooey, sticky, and indulgent – mmm!

With fudgy centres and a crackly top, these brownies are pretty much perfect. I make them with chocolate chips, because you can never have enough chocolate, right? But you could also jazz them up with walnuts or dried cherries if those take your fancy!

They’re a little more involved than my regular brownies, and they use aquafaba, which I’ve explained in a previous post – it’s the liquid from a tin of beans or chickpeas! Yeah, weird right? But it works, so well. And, I’m not joking, you cannot taste beans in the slightest! Do me a favour and just try it, okay?

Fudgy Brownies

• Servings: 20 brownies
• Print

Ingredients

• 115g dark chocolate, broken into chunks
• 60g cocoa powder
• 90g vegan butter (I used vitalite)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 4 tbsp aquafaba
• 360g sugar
• 50ml milk of choice (I used oat milk)
• 265g plain flour
• 100g chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat the oven to 175C/350F/Gas Mark 4
1. In a heat-proof bowl, combine the dark chocolate, cocoa powder, and vegan butter. Either in a microwave, or over a double boiler, heat until the chocolate is completely melted.
2. Into the melted mixture, stir the vanilla, salt, milk, bicarbonate of soda, and aquafaba, and mix until well combined.
3. Add in the sugar and mix with a fork until completely mixed in.
4. Gently fold through the flour until there are no pockets of flour remaining.
5. Finally, stir in the chocolate chips. The mixture is quite thick at this point – that’s what it’s meant to be like!
6. Transfer the mixture into a baking dish and press down until evenly spread.
7. Bake in the preheated oven for 30-35 minutes, until a knife inserted in the middle comes out mostly clean.
8. Leave to cool before slicing, if you can resist!

Thank you to veganbaking.net for the recipe inspiration!

Gooey Cheese Sauce

Mmm, pizza. Who doesn’t love it, with its gooey, stretchy cheese topping? Or lasagne, with the cheesy layer next to the pasta and the tomato sauce?  As vegans, sometimes we think we have to miss out on that. But we don’t!

I found this recipe a while ago on Season Square, a French vegan blog, and adapted it (and translated it!) to make this lovely cheese sauce, which goes great in anything you could use cheese sauce for – on pizza, it hardens up a little and forms a gooey topping, in lasagne, using it instead of the bechamel, in sandwiches…the possibilities are endless!

It’s so simple too – you just blend all the ingredients together, and heat gently, till the sauce thickens and you can then use it however you like.

• Servings: Enough to cover 2 pizzas
• Print

Ingredients

• 350g silken tofu
• 110ml vegetable stock
• 2 tbsp sunflower oil
• 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 3 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 40g cornstarch
• 1 tsp salt

Directions

1. In a large saucepan, fry the minced garlic in the oil for about a minute – don’t let it burn!
2. Remove from the heat, and add the tofu, vegetable stock, salt, cornstarch and nutritional yeast.
3. Using a stick blender (or transfer to a stand blender) blend the mixture until smooth.
4. Return the saucepan to a low heat, and whisk continually until the mixture has thickened.
5. Once thickened, continue to whisk for a further minute, before removing from the heat.
6. Use however you like!

Thank you to Season Square for the recipe inspo!