Recipe: Fudgy Vegan Brownies

I’ve said before that I’m not a particularly good baker by myself, so I tend to spend my time re-creating others’ recipes and figuring out how to make them work for me. This recipe for fudgy vegan brownies is the best one I have ever found.

I did make some slight tweaks and re-arranged the order of instructions below to make them flow better for me. The original recipe has the step with the melted butter first but I found it worked better to do this step second. My oven also runs extremely hot and as I’m in the UK, I find 12 mins at 150 degrees Celsius is the perfect amount of baking time. However, I let them cool for a couple of hours to really become solid and fudgy, rather than 30 mins.

Try this recipe, I promise you won’t regret it! The original recipe is here.

Ingredients

• ½ cup melted vegan butter - hot

• ¾ cup granulated cane sugar

• ⅓ cup non-dairy milk

• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract

• 1 cup all-purpose flour

• ¾ cup cocoa powder

• ¾ teaspoon baking powder (not baking soda!)

• ¼ teaspoon salt

• 1 cup vegan chocolate chips

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

First, line an 8x8 baking pan with parchment paper. Refer to the notes below for the best way to do this. Then rub some softened butter on top of the parchment paper.

In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients: flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the hot melted butter and sugar. Then, whisk in the milk and vanilla.

Mix the dry ingredients into the bowl with the butter and sugar mixture until well combined.

Fold in the chocolate chips.

Spread the batter evenly into the baking pan.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a fork comes out relatively clean. (Keep in mind that if you hit a chocolate chip, the fork won't be clean - just make sure there is no wet brownie batter on it. Some crumbs are okay.)

Let cool for about 30 minutes in the pan. Then grab the parchment paper handles and pull the brownies out. Set on a wire rack to finish cooling completely before cutting.

For clean-cut brownies, run a clean knife under hot water in between each slice.

Store leftover brownies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.

Notes

To line the baking pan, cut two sheets of parchment to fit the width of the baking pan with some paper left hanging over the edges for "handles". Rub a little vegan butter or oil on the bare baking pan, then press one sheet of parchment paper into the pan. The butter/oil helps the paper stick. Rub more butter on the paper, then lay the second sheet down the opposite way. One last time, grease the paper but make sure to also get the sides. Now, you'll be able to easily remove the brownies from the pan when they're done baking!

This recipe calls for baking powder - not baking soda.