Around two years ago I decided to become vegetarian and have never regretted this decision. Since then, I gained huge interest too in the vegan kitchen and especially vegan baking. However, turning vegan has been still an obstacle for me - butter and eggs are just a pastry chef's best friends! But the demand for vegan pastries and desserts is getting higher and higher. There exist already so many substitute products for dairy such as oat, soy, almond and rice milk and their creams but what I find really special are the replacements for eggs. Mushed up bananas, apple sauce, soaked chia and flax seeds, artificial egg substitutes to name a few, but the most interesting one is "Aquafaba" - the jelly-like liquid that canned, cooked chickpeas contain. Whisked up for a couple of minutes, it reaches almost the same consistency as meringue. Maybe experimenting more with vegan products will convince me to finally become vegan?
You can use my 5-ingredient-brownie recipe and replace the eggs by aquafaba and the butter by either coconut oil or margarine. I tried a different recipe today by adding a little bit of cocoa powder and coffee to intensify the chocolate flavour and some peanuts to give the brownies a little extra.
For a large square baking tin you will need:
90g coconut oil
180 dark, vegan chocolate
80g aquafaba, liquid from tinned, cooked chickpeas
90g soft brown or coconut sugar
200g plain flour
30g cocoa powder
pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp espresso
handfull of peanuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, frozen raspberries, crushed up oreos - whatever you like and have on hand
First, heat up the oven to 160°C and line a baking tin with baking paper.
Over a hot water bath let the chocolate and coconut oil melt in a bowl, be careful that the water isn't too hot. Mix the aquafaba together with the sugar. Keep on mixing for several minutes until the liquid thickens up and turns into a meringue-consistency, this can take up to 8 minutes minimum.
Mix the cocoa powder, flour, baking powder and salt together. When the vegan meringue is ready, fold in the espresso and the cooled down chocolate mixture until everything is combined. Last but not least, fold in the dry ingredients.
Pour the batter into the baking tin and sprinkle the peanuts on top. Leave it in the oven for 20 minutes until everything is cooked through.
When finished, take the brownie out of the oven, let them cool down for a bit and enjoy the brownies while they are still warm.
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