Dairy Free Brownies

Sweet, chocolatey, dangerously indulgent chocolate brownies. Simple and quick to make, they are the perfect dessert or sweet treat. Another seemingly impossible dairy free bake!

Oh brownies. Oh sweet chocolatey brownies. Sweet sweet fudge-y, gooey brownies… they’re just the perfect treat no one can resist! I can’t put into words how much I love this recipe, and keep thinking to myself how funny it is that it has taken me this long to put it on the blog! It’s a recipe I make really often (we’re talking at least twice a month!) and it’s just perfect.

These brownies make a fabulous low effort dessert (I love to drizzle a little chocolate sauce on top with a scoop of dairy free ice cream on the side), or when baked for a few minutes longer they come out as the best cold brownies you will ever have eaten. Still moist and fudge-y like a brownie should be, also like the most indulgent chocolate cake.

I remember bringing these brownies into work once, and two amazing things happened; they disappeared like lightning, and no one could genuinely believe they were dairy free. One of my biggest fears of giving up dairy was giving up chocolate. And, probably very unsurprisingly, whenever I tell people that I’m allergic to milk, they also think this must mean a life without chocolate…. Wrong!

In come the heroes of this story…. dark chocolate and cocoa powder. Most dark chocolate is made without milk, so by adapting a recipe ever so slightly, you can still get that wonderfully creamy, sweet chocolate taste – just without the milk! Cocoa powder, the other saviour, is rather the same story – always be careful and check the label, but usually it doesn’t contain any milk. Cocoa powder is different from hot chocolate powder (which often does contain milk, and a very high amount of sugar), and being pure cocoa, a small amount goes a long way to provide a chocolate kick.

This recipe is my go to standard – a recipe from my Boyfriend’s mum, Sue – and it’s so good, so reliable, that it would feel like cheating to even peek at another recipe. It’s also very quick, and you can make them as fussy or simple as you like. I’ve added hazelnuts and dried cranberries as these are some of my favourite things to add to a chocolate recipe (see my Rocky Road recipe to see what I mean!) but they really are perfect without them, just dusted with icing sugar.

Makes 12 generous pieces. Takes 15 minutes plus baking and cooling time.

Ingredients:

• 100g dairy free butter
• 225g caster sugar
• 40g cocoa powder
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla paste
• 50g self raising flour
• 50g dark chocolate, chopped into small chunk
• 35g hazelnuts, bashed into small chunks
• 35g dried cranberries

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees, and line the bottom of an 18cm x 18cm tin.
2. Melt the butter, and leave aside to cool slightly.
3. Whisk together the eggs and sugar until smooth.
4. Add the melted butter, cocoa powder and vanilla and whisk until smooth.
5. 
6. Fold in the flour, hazelnuts and cranberries until no flour can be seen.
7. Pour into the lined tin and bake for 25 minutes (tip: 25 minutes will give you very moist and fudge-y brownies – perfect for a dessert. If you want them more cake-like, bake for 30 minutes)
8. Leave to cool for a few minutes in the tin, then slice, and leave to cool completely on the baking paper.