Recipes

Chocolate Brownies (Cake Angels)

A free-from brownie that doesn't taste like a compromise — the whole trick is a good bar of dark chocolate and five minutes of beating the eggs, and the rest is a single bowl and half an hour in the oven.

Total time
1 h 50 min
Prep
20 min
Cook
30 min
Serves
16

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Main ingredient Chocolate

Techniques whipping folding baking

Dietary looks vegetarian looks gluten-free looks dairy-free Inferred from the ingredients below, not a certification. Check them yourself if it matters.

Tags make-aheadfreezer-friendlycrowd

Ingredients

  • 200 g (7 oz) good-quality dark dairy-free chocolate, minimum 60% cocoa solids
  • 200 g (7 oz) dairy-free butter
  • 2 large eggs, beaten
  • 1 medium egg, beaten
  • 300 g (10½ oz) caster sugar
  • 1½ tsp vanilla extract
  • 100 g (3½ oz) wheat- and gluten-free plain flour
  • 1 tsp xanthan gum
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 35 g (1¼ oz) cocoa powder, plus extra for dusting

Equipment

  • 18 × 27 cm shallow baking tin (7 × 10 1/2 in)
  • Hand-held electric mixer — the five minutes of beating is what makes these

Instructions

  1. Heat the oven to 160 °C (325 °F), or 140 °C in a fan oven. Grease the tin and line it with baking parchment, leaving enough hanging over the sides to lift the finished slab out by.
  2. Melt the chocolate and dairy-free butter together in a heatproof bowl — either set over a pan of gently simmering water, with the base of the bowl clear of the water, or in the microwave on high for about 1 1/2 minutes. Stir until the two have melted smoothly together.
  3. Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla with a hand-held electric mixer on a high speed for about 5 minutes, until the mixture is thick, creamy and pale.
  4. Drop the mixer to its slowest speed and pour in the melted chocolate, mixing only until it is evenly combined.
  5. Sift the flour, xanthan gum, salt and cocoa powder over the surface and fold them through with long, unhurried strokes. The beaten eggs are the only lift this has, so the folding is there to keep the air in rather than to mix quickly.
  6. Spoon the mixture into the lined tin, push it evenly into the corners, and level the top with the back of a metal spoon.
  7. Bake for 30 minutes. They will look undercooked when the timer goes and the temptation is to leave them in — don't. Brownies carry on cooking and firm up as they cool.
  8. Cool in the tin for a full hour; the longer you leave them, the more cleanly they cut. Dust lightly with cocoa powder, lift the slab out by the parchment, peel the paper away and let it finish cooling on a wire rack.
  9. Once completely cold, cut into squares — with a large plastic knife if you have one, otherwise a large sharp knife heated in hot water and wiped between cuts, which keeps the whole thing from turning into a gooey mess.

Notes & tips

From the source.

  • The chocolate is the recipe. The author's stated key is really good-quality dairy-free chocolate with at least 60% cocoa solids, and her claim for these is that nobody will work out they are dairy-, wheat- and gluten-free.
  • Makes 12 to 16 squares. The frontmatter records the upper end.
  • Better the day after baking, if you can leave them alone that long.
  • Freezes, per the source's own freeze note.
  • Serving: on their own with a cup of coffee, or warm with raspberry coulis and dairy-free ice cream.
  • The source calls the same ingredient two things — "dairy-free butter" in the ingredient list and "dairy-free spread" in the method. It means one ingredient, not two.

Other versions of this dish

Source

Julia Thomas, Cake Angels: Amazing gluten, wheat and dairy free cakes (HarperCollins, 2011, ISBN 9780007439294), p. 84. Transcribed from a photograph of the page, archived in sources/. Instructions rewritten; the source's own gram weights are used unchanged, with its ounces kept in the parentheses.