Vegan Mocha Brownies


At our house we pronounce that veh-jan mote-cha brownies. Because we like saying things in ways we shouldn't. Also, as far as brownie batters go, this is one of the best. I can still hear my kid scraping the bowl to death.



You'll need:


  • 2/3 cup coffee
  • 1/2 cup canola oil
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 1 tablespoon ground flax seeds
  • 1/2 cup cocoa
  • 1 1/4 cups sugar
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 cup chocolate chips


What to do:


  1. Preheat oven to 350 and get a pan ready (grease or spray w/ oil). This can make an 8x8 pan, it can fill 6 muffin cups high or 12 muffin cups low, it can make 24 mini-muffin brownies or it can fill a Baker's Edge pan quite nicely. Your choice, people.
  2. In a bowl, mix the wet ingredients with the flax seed and cocoa.
  3. In another bowl, sift together the dry ingredients (except chips) and add to the wet ingredients, mixing just until you don't see the whiteness of any flour. Don't go crazy.
  4. Fold in chocolate chips.
  5. Fill prepared pan and bake for 20-30 minutes. For mini-muffins, check at 20. For an 8x8, it can go 30 minutes or longer. If using a toothpick to check these, it doesn't have to come out perfectly clean, but should be mostly clean with a little crumb action. (Make sure you don't jab a chip when you're checking!)



A bowl full of coffee and ground flax seeds. That's about how I start every morning...


I love the look of a glossy brownie batter.


Fill mini-muffin cups about this full and what you get is:


Tip: The stronger the coffee, the more coffee taste in the brownies, so brew to taste.

Comments

  1. AnonymousFebruary 9, 2011 at 4:25 AM

    these brownies sound awesome!!!!! i love anything mocha!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Came for the Health Benefits but I'm Staying for the Animals

Image
Something has happened to me recently, but first, let me talk a little about how I arrived at this point. For most of my 43 years on this planet, I've been a vegetarian. When I was 14 years old, living with a foster family who owned a cattle farm, something clicked in me and I decided that I'd had enough of eating animals. But it wasn't easy. There wasn't a Whole Foods on every corner. Grocery stores in my little country town did not sell almond milk and tofu. The vegetables I'd been exposed to were peas, potatoes and corn and not much else up to that point. I didn't know how to cook anything and I didn't have my own money to even buy my own food. Luckily, that farmer's wife helped me sign up for a subscription to Vegetarian Times and was very supportive of what I wanted to do. It could have gone another way, for sure. So, for years, I did it for the animals. I didn't have graphic videos of male chicks being ground and suffocated. I
Read more of this post >>

Meatless Monday

Image
If you're a complete and total newbie when it comes to vegan food and you're thinking about making the transition but you're not quite ready yet or you just don't want to go whole hog (or "whole tofu" as we say in the veg world), then why not give Meatless Mondays a try? Not everyone is ready to make the leap in one day from meat at every meal to zero animal products whatsoever. That's okay. Use this one day a week to give it a test drive. Once you've got a month of Meatless Mondays under your belt, try adding another day per week. Maybe Veggie Taco Tuesdays or Spaghetti Saturdays? It's up to you. Try to focus on the progress you're making toward a completely plant-based diet and not worry about every single day being perfect. If you really can't let go of that struggle for perfection, then make the same meal every Meatless Monday, but work on changing it each week until it's just the way you like it. Then start perfecting anot
Read more of this post >>

Cheap Alternative to Maple Syrup

Image
One of my favorite vegan cookies has maple syrup as one of the ingredients. I love the stuff but it can get expensive ($14 at Costco is a deal, but still) when you use it a lot or want to make a big batch of cookies. The aforementioned cookie recipe calls for 1/3 cup of it for just 8-10 cookies. I decided to see if I could just make a syrup myself and it worked out great! Brown Sugar Syrup You'll need: 1 1/2 cups water 2 cups packed organic / vegan brown sugar Optional: 1/2 teaspoon flavoring (maple extract, vanilla, whatever floats your boat) What you do: Mix sugar and water together and bring to a boil. Gently boil for 2 minutes and remove from heat and allow to cool. Once cooled, add flavoring if desired. Store in fridge. The first time I boiled the mix for 3 minutes and the cookies came out super crisp and had a toffee flavor. The syrup was just too thick and condensed. The coookies weren't bad, but I really like a softer cookie. This weekend, I boiled
Read more of this post >>