I hope you are all healthy and well 😃
My whole family is addicted to brownies. Today I've prepared a vegan version of the batter and then assembled plant based desserts for all. I was like crazy in the kitchen, but I got to make enough pictures of both the process and results to show you what I've done with ingredients you can find easily. I hope you like it.
As I'm the reincarnation of the cake-giver, a medieval lady in my family's unwritten alliterative poems, I'm always well stocked with cocoa powder, which is the ingredient they want in their birthday cakes 90% of the time.
I'm talking about unsweetened cocoa powder, as I sometimes have to make sugar-free desserts for my dad; luckily, we can find good quality, fairly affordable brands.
Today I'm using Savoy; I paid $14 for this 1 kg bag. The other brand I use a lot is Hacienda El Placer, a local producer; but today Savoy was a bit cheaper.
I made two presentations using the same batter as a base. I'll show you both, and then I'd like to show you how I prepared the last one: fruit brownies in glasses.
Brownie with nuts, topped and partially mixed with cocoa fudge (made with vegetable milk). This one was a present for a friend.
... And fruit brownies in small glasses of varying sizes and purposes, which were my favorite brownies of this round.
For the cake:
• 2 cups self-rising wheat flour
• 1 ½ cups Greenstar rice & coconut milk
• ½ cups corn oil
• 1 3/4 cane sugar
• 2 tablespoons vanilla essence
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cups cocoa powder (unsweetened)
• plums, pineapple chunks, peanuts, almonds, and walnuts to taste
For the fudge:
• 1 cup Greenstar rice & coconut milk
• 1 cup homemade creamy coconut milk
• 2 tablespoons Nelly margarine
• 1 1/2 cups cane sugar
• ½ cups cocoa powder
• ½ cup more coconut milk and a little water to thin the fudge in order to moisten the brownie.
This brownie batter is very easy to make. In a large bowl, mix the sugar, oil, vegetable milk, and vanilla essence. I mix it all by alternating a whisk and a silicone pastry spoon.
Then pour in the sifted cocoa powder and mix well.
Finally, pour in the sifted flour and salt, and--again--mix well.
For a moment, while hand whisking the mixture, I felt it a bit dry and thought about adding some hot water or hot coffee...
But then I left it like that.
Now, I can tell you that after tasting the final result, I think the texture could be improved by adding hot coffee instead of milk and a teaspoon of white vinegar; this is in case you want to eat the brownie cake without soaking it in thin fudge.
The truth is that I can't say for sure yet, but I'll try it and I'll let you know how I've done with the substitution of ingredients to achieve a vegan mix that I can make with simple ingredients. For now, I can count a victory: nobody noticed the difference between these plant based brownies and the ones I make regularly, since I was generous with the fufge and the fruits. An important detail is that some of them did tell me that the chocolate fudge tasted a little coconutty and that it was tastier than before. I agree!
I'm pretty picky about textures and it's not easy to get the one you want the first time when you're substituting ingredients.
As you can see, it looks pretty much like regular brownie batter, only that not so dark...
...But it gets darker in the oven.
I baked twice in my small electric oven. Unlike other times, today I used an 8" round baking pan. I let the first brownie, which had 2/3 of the batter, bake for 35 minutes at 300 °F. The second brownie, which had 1/3 of the batter and was the one I crumbled to make the desserts in the glasses, baked for 20 minutes at 300°F. The pan was well greased with margarine.
Making the fudge is a bit tricky, because if you don't want to use a bain-marie, you have to whisk non-stop to prevent the mixture from sticking to the bottom of the pan and getting burned. I do it without a bain-marie when it's a small quantity, as it's today. All we have to do is melt the margarine and then add the sugar and cocoa powder and mix until we get a fluid mixture. Then add the milk.
Next, you need to achieve the desired thickness, using cornstarch. This time I used 1/3 cup of cornstarch diluted in 1 cup of cold water.
It turned out really well: thick, dark, and delicious.
I used a lot of it to decorate my friend's belated birthday cake (2/3 of the total brownie).
I also managed to get some of the hot fudge inside this brownie; basically I partially broke the brownie's surface to let the fudge in.
The smaller and less pretty brownie I used to make the other desserts for my family. Ugly Duckling.
I crumbled the cake and assembled the desserts. You can see an example below:
I put some brownie crumbs and then a mixture of fudge with some more coconut milk and water, to make it thinner. The crumbs soaked in very well; the thin fudge significantly improved the texture of the brownie, in addition to its flavor, of course. Then I put some very thick fudge on top, some fresh pineapple chunks and more crumbs and thin fudge.
Finally, the toppings: a big pineapple chunk, plums and almonds.
I ate this one and loved the result 😀
I made another more sober one, with seedless plum halves attached to the walls of the glass...
In the photo below you can see another one with just brownie, fudge and almonds; more traditional. You'll be surprised to know that the one they liked the most was the one with pineapple and plums. I didn't see that coming.
When you serve them assorted desserts, it's possible for the adults to behave like children and start tasting each other's dessert and sometimes even exchanging them. It's a fun thing to watch, at least for me.
