Recipe Post 2024: Brownie Bonanzas - Trying new recipes, refining method and more!

 Hello all,

I hope you are all doing great and enjoying the weekend, wherever. For the UK it means the nice length bank holiday weekend, forecast for sun, carnival & hopefully lots of fun!

During my break, I have explored various recipes, ingredients and website sources to put together the ultimate decadent and delicious chocolate brownie that is made with clean ingredients, gluten free, vegan and that’s low in sugar (and can be enjoyed alongside another sweet i.e ice cream).

It has been my mission to continually trial and error baking recipes so that 1) Saves you guys the time and effort 2) I am able to share valuable tips and advice on perfecting the recipe so that your brownie always comes on top !!

Phase 1: Exploring different recipes:

Thanks to the likes of Pinterest, a.k.a not sponsored sadly :( , I simply searched for easy vegan brownies to start me off.

Not to my surprise I was overwhelmed for choice and variety of different textures and finishes. 

However, the following recipe captured my attention since it asked for the majority of ingredients I already had, which is also helpful, especially on a budget! 

The ingredients were:

Coconut Oil

Dairy free / vegan dark chocolate

Soft dark brown sugar

Vanilla extract

Chickpea flour

Baking soda

Although the recipe asked for aquafaba, I did not have a spare tin of fresh chickpeas, and so just used dairy-free milk as a replacement. 

And to my surprise, the brownies came out quite well, see images below:

I tried a similar recipe which required gluten flour and cocoa powder, and this changed the consistency, texture and overall taste of the brownie. While this recipe was still vegan, it was no longer gluten-free and hence less accessible for others to re-create:

Later on, after a few tries, I wanted to make these brownies guilt-free as well as fool proof, so was looking into options that were low in sugar, sugar-free or naturally sweetened with fruits etc. I then came across the following recipe using dates:

The texture of the brownies was not what I expected and I would have liked a more cakey-ier finish, compared to what it was. I have also used dates to make Noomz style fudge pops

One ingredient I have not yet tried for my brownie recipe is peanut butter, or even a nut butter in general. I think avoiding nut butter, dairy and even eggs makes the recipe versatile and more or less is suitable for nearly all diets out there!

I hope you enjoyed this week's post!

Thank you, and please keep baking!

Lots of love,

#sweetreats

Recipe Post 2024 - Vegan Ventures - Homemade Fudge!

 Hello,

Like the last blog post, I am continuing with my terrible punch lines mixed with alliteration. But anyway, this week's blog post is titled as vegan ventures, as I hope this post will be the start of a possible series of trying vegan recipes, experimenting with textures & flavours. 

I was inspired to make this post by Daisy Keech who recommended to try noomz popsicles. As someone who lives in the UK, I wanted to save the money and effort of ordering and shipping overseas and recreating the dessert myself. 

For this recipe you'll need:

Whole cashews

Pitted dates

Cocoa powder

Vanilla extract

Salt

Dairy-free milk

Baking in progress:

Firstly, allow dates to open up more and boil down for 10 minutes.

Once 10 minutes is over, cool the dates down before adding to all the dry ingredients combined.

Preferably a food processer would be ideal, I ended up using a hand blender and even my own handheld whisker.

Add desired amount of water to allow mixture to be smooth, without any lumps.