Hi friends, hope you are enjoying the sun and hot Spring weather! Well, I certainly am getting my daily dose of Vitamin D.
Two weekends ago, my girlfriend invited me and my family over to her place in Zurich for lunch. My friend is a vegan and a fellow foodie. We both love eating food, discussing food and making food!
I love cooking for my vegan friend because I get to try new vegan recipes. It challenges me to create something different and delicious. I wanted to bring something yummy for dessert but I only wanted to use ingredients that I have available in my pantry.
Anyway, I researched and saw this yummy vegan brownie recipe. It had ingredients that I love baking with- coconut flour, cacao powder, coconut oil, maple syrup. The recipe also had an ingredient that I never used before- flaxmeal. I have seen many vegan desserts using flaxmeal and water, as an egg replacer, and was always put off using it because I thought I needed to buy it specially. Now I know you just have to blend flaxseeds and viola, you have flaxmeal. Duh!
I tweaked the recipe to suit my taste, by making it less sweet. You can use dark chocolate chips if you like to make it bittersweet or add more maple syrup to make it sweeter. The simplest way is to taste the batter to adjust to your own preferences.
The original recipe called for a 8x8 brownie pan but I only had a 24cm spring form cake tin. So I turned the recipe into a vegan chocolate cake. Sometimes in life you just have to wing it and see where it leads!
Surprisingly, the cake turned out very well for a first try. My friend, her boyfriend (who is not vegan) and my husband (who is gluten intolerant) all thoroughly enjoyed the cake. They were asking for seconds! The feedback I got from them was that they liked that it was chocolaty, moist and just the right sweetness.
I hope you enjoy making this cake as much as I did. I would love to hear your experience.
Please comment, like or share this recipe.
Thank you for dropping by today!
Ingredients
1 cup oat milk (or any other non-dairy milk) 3 Tbsp + 2 tsp flaxmeal ½ cup cacao powder ½ cup chocolate chips ½ cup maple syrup 3 Tbsp coconut oil (plus more to grease cake tin) 2.5 tsp vanilla extract ¾ cup + 2 Tbsp coconut flour 3 Tbsp cornstarch ¼ tsp baking soda ¼ tsp baking powder ⅛ tsp pinch of salt
Decorations Coconut flakes Goji berries
Directions
Preheat the oven to 185 degrees C
Heat oat milk to just about a boil. Pour into to a bowl. Add the flaxmeal, cacao powder, chocolate chips and let sit for minute. Then mix well to melt to a smooth consistency. Add the maple syrup, coconut oil, vanilla extract, and mix well. Let sit for 5 minutes.
In another bowl, add coconut flour, cornstarch, baking powder and soda and salt. Whisk well.
Add dry to the wet and mix to combine. The batter will become a spongy soft dough and it will continue to dry out. Do not let it sit for long, bake immediately. Transfer batter/dough to greased cake mould. Pat down to flatten (This was the most tricky part but just do your best to spread it in the cake mould)
Bake for 25 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes, decorate with coconut flakes and goji berries. Best served warm.
Adapted from Vegan Richa