Chocolate walnut brownies

[rydra_wong]

These are the best iteration yet of a flourless brownie recipe that I've been perfecting for a while.

Ingredients:

2 large eggs
120g butter
1 cup unsweetened cocoa/cacao powder
1 and 1/3 cup coconut sugar (or regular brown sugar)
1/3 tsp sea salt, crushed
50g walnuts, finely chopped
40-50g 100% cocoa chocolate, finely chopped

Melt the butter in a bain marie. While that's going on, mix the sugar, salt, eggs and walnuts.

Once the butter's melted, remove from the heat, stir in the cocoa powder, then add to the rest. Add the chocolate last of all.

Bake at 200 degrees C for 30 minutes. They get even better after they've been in the fridge for a while.

ETA note: if you'd like to make them dairy-free as well, you can replace the melted butter with 120g almond butter plus several tsbp of water, just enough to make the mixture stir-able. I left the walnuts out of this version for fear of nut overload, but YMMV.

Comments

[runpunkrun]

Those sound simple and delicious. Since you add the chocolate last, does melt in the hot butter mixture at all, or are you left with little chunks of chocolate in your finished brownies?

[rydra_wong]

It melts, but I wanted a somewhat irregular texture (not sure if I achieved that).

If you want to make sure it's as smooth as possible, you could add the chocolate earlier (maybe even melt it with the butter?).

[runpunkrun]

I usually melt the chocolate with the butter in the bain marie, but I'm intrigued by the idea of purposely leaving the chocolate a little chunky.

[rydra_wong]

Oh, btw, I edited to add details of a dairy-free version (as I just tested that), so you might want to tag it with that too.

[nerakrose]

these sound amazing! i might have to try them. i have a recipe for flourless chocolate brownies, but it uses bananas as a substitute - it's great, but you can *really* tell there's banana in it and i don't always want the banana experience when i want brownies... anyway! thanks for sharing! i'll be saving this one.

[indywind]

I have flourless brownie recipes using black beans or sweet potato, which you can really tell have something other than flour in them, but exactly-what is not as obvious as with banana. The black bean one has kind of a coffee flavor (just from the black beans, no coffee added) and fudgey texture. The sweet-potato one kind of tastes... vegetable-y? I think it needs more tweaking to really suit my taste.

Flourless brownie recipe swap meet!

[nerakrose]

i've heard of those, but never actually tried them! my brother swears by them (he's a crossfit type, so for him it's about protein, or something, idk). i've baked chocolate cakes with shredded red beets and (different recipe) shredded zucchini, but those weren't flourless. the shredded veg adds a lot of moisture, which i can only recommend. the beets one was so heavy on the cocoa and chocolate the earthy beet flavour was completely masked (which is a nice way to say the cake did not in fact taste like dirt). i'll try to see if i can find the recipe, i don't know if i saved it...

this is the recipe i use for the flourless chocolate/banana cake/brownies, except i omit the cinnamon: https://eatlivepaleo.com/2011/12/26/flourless-choc-cinnamon-banana-cake/

[miella]

Oh, I am fascinated by a non-coffee coffee option!

black bean brownies

[indywind]

They're basically this recipefrom Live Eat Learn Blog or the exact same recipe with less bloggy commentary at Allrecipes.com but leave out the optional espresso powder/instant coffee. They still taste coffee-ish without it. If I recall correctly, I've also left out most of the oil, or added an extra egg, or drained the beans but not rinsed them, and it didn't make much difference. Next to try: adding some hazelnut meal or chopped walnuts.

[rydra_wong]

I had a great revelation and realized that brownies don't actually need flour-substitutes in them at all, as long as you want them to be towards the fudge-y rather than cake-y end of the brownie spectrum.

[nerakrose]

this is true! i've made brownies before where they were pretty much flourless, save for 30g potato starch or something, which at that point makes you wonder why even bother putting those 30g in....

I am caught on the mushy question

[jesse_the_k]

of "what's the difference between flourless chocolate cake and fudge?"

Those sounds exceptionally rich. That's a good thing.

Re: I am caught on the mushy question

[rydra_wong]

They are extremely dense and rich. Though IMHO not super-sweet (see comment discussion below).

[miella]

How sweet are these? Is it a total sugar bomb, or more like fudge, or more like regular brownies?

[rydra_wong]

Like regular brownies. Maybe even a bit less sweet than some I've had -- not that they're light on sugar, but it's balanced out by the bitter from the chocolate and the walnuts.