Crackly Vegan Brownies Recipe made with Melted Dairy-Free Chocolate

Have you ever noticed how most vegan brownie recipes are more like chocolate cake? Without eggs, it can be difficult to get a dense, moist texture that also sets up. But these crackly vegan brownies appear to have found that decadent balance.

Photo credit: Alex Shytsman

Crackly Vegan Brownies made with Melted Dairy-Free Chocolate

This recipe is a sample from the cookbook, Wait, That’s Vegan?! by Lisa Dawn Angerame. Her new collection focuses on plant-based twists of classic and gourmet comfort food, from Salt-Cured Beet Carpaccio to Chickpea Scampi. The recipes cover breakfast, salads, sandwiches, mains, and of course, desserts.

Lisa includes a little story in the introduction of each recipe. Here’s what she wrote about the crackly vegan brownies recipe below.

When I was telling a friend about the dessert chapter of this book, she assumed there was going to be a brownie recipe in it, because everyone needs a good brownie recipe. I told her that I tried everything over the years, without success, using all kinds of egg replacers and other ingredients. The only thing I didn’t try was melting chocolate into the batter. Um, hello? Why not?
So, I went into full recipe development mode and, with a little tinkering and a lot of melted chocolate, I came up with this recipe. These little squares hit every mark: fudgy, chewy and crackly. You need to make these right now.

Lisa also uses aquafaba, which tends to provide better structure than most other egg substitutes in recipes like this one.

Special Diet Notes: Crackly Vegan Brownies

By ingredients, this recipe is dairy-free / non-dairy, egg-free, nut-free, peanut-free, optionally soy-free, vegan, and vegetarian.

Crackly Vegan Brownies

Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

25 mins

Total time

40 mins

This recipe is reprinted with permission from Wait, That's Vegan?! by Lisa Dawn Angerame, Page Street Publishing Co. 2019.

Author: Lisa Dawn Angerame

Recipe type: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Serves: 16 brownies

Ingredients

1 cup (220 g) packed vegan brown sugar
3 tablespoons (45 ml) sunflower oil (can sub another oil)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup (240 g) dairy-free mini semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup (125 g) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1⁄2 teaspoon salt
1⁄4 cup (60 ml) aquafaba, room temperature

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C, or gas mark 4). Line an 8x8–inch (20x20–cm) brownie pan with parchment paper.
Place the chocolate chips in a double boiler or in a heatproof bowl over a pot of boiling water. Mix with a silicone spoonula and melt until smooth. Take the chocolate off the heat and set aside.
Add the flour, baking powder and salt into a big mixing bowl. Mix together well.
In a separate medium mixing bowl, whisk the aquafaba until it becomes foamy and white. Add the brown sugar, oil and vanilla. Whisk to combine. Fold in the melted chocolate chips.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Mix until the batter comes together. It will be thick. Turn the batter out into the brownie pan and press it to the edges; even it out, using a silicone spoonula, a small measuring cup, or a glass.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Let the brownies cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Lift the brownies out by the parchment, place them on a cooling rack and cool completely before cutting into squares.

Notes

Note: Parchment paper can be a little challenging when it comes to lining a small pan. To make it easier to work with, crumple it up, run a little water over it and squeeze it out. It will become soft and pliable. Spread it out, dry it off and use as needed.